Former teammates move on from Kansas incident
DARLINGTON, S.C. — Lost in the excitement of the closest finish in NASCAR history last weekend at Kansas Speedway was the last-lap contact between former teammates Tyler Reddick and Auston Dillon.
The result was Dillon sliding through the infield grass to a 25th-place finish. Reddick placed 20th.
This was not the first such incident between the two, who were teammates at Richard Childress Racing from 2019-22. Last summer at Pocono, Dillon threw his helmet at Reddick’s car after they made contact and Dillon crashed.
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Dillon said Saturday that he doesn’t see last weekend’s incident with Reddick in the same light as their Pocono contact.
Dillon explained to NBC Sports what happened: “I got tight off Turn 4 racing there at the end of the race and was going to have to lift or smoke the wall. I lift a little bit and then Tyler had a heck of a run and turned me. I wasn’t really frustrated with Tyler as much as our race car.
“I should have been able to make that corner because the air wasn’t bad in front of me. I just got tight and it would have been nice if he would have lifted. He apologized afterwards. I said it would have been nice for a lift, but in the same sentence I would hope that with new tires we would have been able to make that corner. Nothing really there other than the fact that I wish we could have made the corner.”
Here is what Reddick had to say about the incident:
“Austin and Corey (Heim) were racing side-by-side, and I went to the top lane to try to have a good run off the corner and Austin just checked up more than I was expecting him to,” Reddick said. “Yeah, I flat out wrecked him. I just made a horrible day that much worse, to be honest with you. I cost myself spots. I cost him a race car and him a top 20. It was just icing on the cake for a rough day.”
Reddick admitted it was “tough” talking to Dillon because this wasn’t their first incident recently.
“A few weeks prior at Texas, we were battling on a restart and we came together," Reddick said. "Thankfully, we didn’t wreck, but we came together there. I kind of put him in a bad spot and then Kansas, I didn’t really put him in a spot, I ran in the back of him.
“You never want to have a trend like that with anybody, let alone someone that was your teammate for a number of years.”