Starting from the lead in Sunday’s Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas, Tyler Reddick had the chance to make history. He beat out former COTA winner Ross Chastain for the pole while Chase Briscoe, Ryan Blaney, and Chase Elliott rounded out the top-five.
During the first lap of the race, Chase Briscoe made a three-wide pass for the lead in turn 1. Within the first laps, Tyler Reddick had fallen all the way to fifth. On lap 9, Blaney took the lead away from Briscoe. As green flag pit stops began, Ross Chastain became the leader and eventually took the stage one victory.
The restart saw Blaney and Reddick on the front row, and Reddick took the outright lead during the first lap of the stage. The leaders began to pit on lap 43 while Riley Herbst and Connor Zilisch made contact and spun. They were able to continue and avoided bringing out the caution.
During these green flag stops, Ty Gibbs inherited the lead and held on to become the stage two winner. After the rest of the field took to the pits, Tyler Reddick once again found himself in the lead. At this point, some drivers began to have issues with their cooling suits in the Texas heat.
On lap 52, Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar made contact, but again avoided a caution. On lap 62, green flag pit stops began. 11 laps later, Alex Bowman headed to the garage due to illness, presumably due to the cool suit issues. Myatt Snider hopped in the car for him and finished the race in the 48.
On lap 75, the first caution for incident came out. It was for Ross Chastain who lost a wheel in turn 19. He was given a two lap penalty for the incident. The restart once again saw Reddick and Blaney at the front. On lap 82, Kyle Busch made contact with Jesse Love and Chris Buescher, but the three were able to continue.
Things started to heat up on lap 84 as road course expert and Saturday’s O’Reilly Series winner Shane Van Gisbergen started to challenge Reddick for the lead. By lap 89, however, Reddick had pulled away to a four second lead. He held on to that lead and made history by becoming the first driver in history to win the first three races of the season.
The Cup Series will return to action on Sunday, March 8th at Phoenix Raceway.
Featured photo from @NASCAR on Twitter
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