Tyler Reddick gets the win in Texas, playoff race starts to heat up (9-25-22)
By: Becca Cottingham Quimby
Headline Photo Credit: NASCAR Twitter Page
We head to Texas Motor Speedway for what is sure to be a hot Sunday race. Brad Keselowski will lead the group to green with Joey Logano beside him. They will lead most of the lap one side by side, but Brad Keselowski will take the lead. Martin Truex Jr will bring us to our first caution of the day when he got loose and spins out. Brad Keselowski will get hit with a speeding penalty on pit road. So he will have to go to the rear. They decide to bring him back down the pit road and top him off on fuel. We get back to racing and William Byron will take over the lead. Until Kyle Busch’s rear breaks loose and hits the left rear hard. Kyle Busch took his car directly to the garage. We barely get back to racing and Ricky Stenhouse Jr goes for a wild ride. We then see a tire blow on Christopher Bell. While Cole Cluster spins out while the yellow is out. Almost at the end, we will get another hard crash by Alex Bowman they do try to fix his car on pit road. Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin battle hard and they even make contact coming down to the end of stage one. They both get straight and Kyle Larson will win stage one.
We get back racing with stage two and not long in we have Alex Bowman clean the crash clock. Then we see an unexpected green flag pitstop by Tyler Reddick. He gets on pit road without an issue. Christopher Bell, however, spins out for the second time. We get a fire on pit road on Harrison Burton’s car. They get it out and finish getting his car serviced. Things settle down overall until an extremely scary crash with Cody Ware in turn four that carried onto pit road. He just did miss an opening on pit road. We get another hard hit by Chase Elliot that causes his car to catch fire. Ryan Blaney will keep the lead and win stage two.
We try to go back to racing for stage three but mother nature had other plans. We started to get rain and then lightning within the area of the track. So drivers had to get out of their cars. Chris Buscher will bring out the first caution of stage three. Kevin Harvick in the car designed by his daughter Piper hit the wall hard. We get back into a rhythm with drivers. Denny Hamlin and William Bryon have some issues in turn two. Then just over thirty laps into another green flag run Martin Truex Jr blows a tire and hits the wall from the lead. William Byron spins out Denny Hamlin in possibly getting him back for the incident on turn two under caution. Then Denny rubs William Byron back under caution so now we have drama between these two playoff drivers. Then we see Ricky Stenhouse Jr lose his rear and hit the wall. Austin Cindric will then spin to avoid being hit by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. This caution placed Denny Hamlin and William Byron one row apart. Before we can truly get going Aric Almirola brings out the sixteenth caution of the night. We see another three wide restarts. Tyler Reddick will get back to the lead and will not look backward. He will be our unofficial winner at Texas.
