The Hollywood Casino 400 ends in a win for Tyler Reddick after a late mistake cost him at Darlington last week, let’s talk about it!
The race started with issues for our regular season champion Martin Truex Jr. As he hit debris on track and blew a tire on lap four ending his day early after a great qualifying effort.
Kyle Larson then went on a tear for the next 100 laps winning stage 1 in the process. In stage 2 the race unraveled for several playoff drivers. First it was Stenhouse making contact with the wall several times before Bubba Wallace lost a tire and brought out a caution on lap 109. He was able to meet minimum speed but he was never able to recover the laps he lost despite being the fastest car on the track near the end of the day.
Austin Cindric would bring out a caution with a spin on lap 115 before Chase Briscoe lost power on lap 126 and brought out a caution that would split the strategy between saving tires for the end of the race and using them to try to make up track position to get stage points.
This went best for Brad Keselowski who was able to win stage 2 with fresh tires and went sideways for Kyle Larson who stayed out on old tires and with a bad restart fell out of the top-15 entirely by the end of the stage.
The third stage was when Toyota took over with Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick pacing the field through green flag pit stops until a caution came out with seven to go after playoff driver Chris Buescher blew a tire. This set up a green-white checkered finish that saw Daniel Suárez stay out and several drivers take two tires.
On the final restart of the race, Suárez fell back and Reddick dove underneath Erik Jones and Joey Logano coming to the white flag and was unchallenged on the final circuit as he brought home his second win of the hear and locked himself into the Round of 12.
Jones was able to hang onto the top-five finish for his first of the year finishing an impressive P3. Hamlin came runner-up after dominating late and Larson had a great recovery drive to fourth as Logano rounded out the top-five.
Toyota has won every race at Kansas in the next gen with the #45 winning 3/4 races with three different drivers, Toyota has got this place figured out and it’s downright impressive.
Next week we are going to Bristol for the Bass Pro Shops night race and the cutoff for the Round of 16 in the Cup Series. It is sure to be a great race with the stress of the playoff cutoff only adding to it!
Photo Credit: NBC Sports
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