Tyler Reddick laments Homestead win that got away

It looked like Tyler Reddick was headed towards a seven-win season in the NASCAR Cup Series until the second-to-last lap of Sunday's season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

That was when Reddick, one in the business at running the outside at tracks like Homestead, where it's the preferred groove, ran the bottom and left the outside open.

Ryan Blaney took full advantage, whipping around Reddick on the outside coming to the white flag and driving away to take the checkered flag by 0.314 seconds. 

What Tyler Reddick would've done differently at Homestead

"Obviously, if it could've played out perfectly, I would've kept him behind me," Reddick told NBC. "I don't know. I blocked him down pretty far [on the backstretch with two to go.] He still had a pretty big run there. The way he was able to drive right by Byron, it was pretty obvious his stuff was working good. 

"I think what I was hoping for was to keep him from getting alongside [me] into three and hope I just ran the best three and four of my life around the top... I don't know what the word is. I was able to do that to him in 2024. He returned the favor this year. Seemed like those guys nailed it on that last restart."

The weekend still ended up going much better than it could've for Reddick, who crashed at the end of practice on Friday night. 

Reddick ended 2026 fifth in the final standings, 104 points back of champion Kyle Larson after winning six races, including five of the first nine. He totaled 15 top-fives, 21 top-10s and led 595 laps. 

"We do good preparation," Reddick said. "We show up with a lot of speed. Today was a really good day, honestly. These are the kind of days that we need to have consistently and we'd win a lot more races. Six wins was good, but there was so many races that got away this year... we got a lot to look at, a lot to work on."