Not to be denied by a late caution that set up a double overtime period, Tyler Reddick wrestled the lead back from William Byron to win the Firekeepers Casino 400 at Michigan, picking up his second win of the 2024 season and inheriting the lead in the battle for the regular-season championship. Reddick's win is the seventh of his Cup career and the seventh in team history for 23XI Racing.
After a cycle of green flag pit stops played out, Reddick looked set to cruise to the victory when Martin Truex Jr. hit the wall with five laps to go, bringing out a caution that forced Reddick to have to battle things out with William Byron. Although Byron would be scored ahead of Reddick when Ross Chastain spun out during the first overtime, Reddick was able to get the launch he needed on the final restart to clear Byron and lead the final two laps.
Firekeepers Casino 400 unofficial results
- #45 - Tyler Reddick
- #24 - William Byron
- #54 - Ty Gibbs
- #8 - Kyle Busch
- #6 - Brad Keselowski
- #17 - Chris Buescher
- #71 - Zane Smith (R)
- #99 - Daniel Suarez
- #11 - Denny Hamlin
- #77 - Carson Hocevar (R)
Immediately after the race, Reddick dedicated his win to dirt racing legend and mentor Scott Bloomquist, who died Friday in a plane crash near his home in Tennessee.
"I can't help but sit here in Victory Lane and think of Scott Bloomquist, man," Reddick told NBC Sports. "Huge mentor to me, an incredible role model, and legend of dirt racing and motorsports. The last couple days have been tough, and his really helps it.
"And so this win, I think, should go for him and his family, his friends and all that meant a lot to him."
By virtue of his victory, Reddick also inherits the regular-season championship points lead, capitalizing on a crash by Kyle Larson to take over the top spot by 10 points over Chase Elliott with two races remaining in the regular season. Those 10 points loom especially large after the last lap, when Elliott got into Ryan Blaney in Turn 2 while racing for a top-five finish. The contact relegated Elliott to a 15th-place finish, giving Reddick a much more comfortable after he had entered the weekend just a point above Elliott in the standings.
The first 52 laps of the race were run on Sunday before persistent rain in the Michigan area forced the remainder of the race to be run on Monday.
Bursting Bubba's Bubble
Like his 23XI teammate in Reddick, Bubba Wallace brought a very fast car with potential race-winning pace to Michigan. That was clear during the first 51 laps on Sunday, when he made a daring three-wide pass for the lead and led the next five laps near the end of Stage 1. That pace in Wallace's car was considerably more than the drivers he is racing for a playoff spot, but he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On a Lap 115 restart, Kyle Larson -- trying to work his way through traffic that had either stayed out or taken two tires on pit road near the end of Stage 2 -- lost it in front of traffic exiting Turn 4, collecting Wallace and five more cars including Chase Brisoce, Chris Buescher, Christopher Bell, Joey Logano and Todd Gilliland.
Wallace was able to limp on, but his car was never the same as his damage limited him to finishing one lap down in 26th. Buescher's recovery to an eventual sixth-place finish, as well as a third-place finish for Ty Gibbs, nearly spelled disaster for Wallace's bid to make the NASCAR playoffs for the second year in a row -- but Chastain's spin in overtime, which dropped him to 25th just ahead of Wallace, offered him a lifeline.
While Gibbs (+39) and Buescher (+16) were able to build significant gaps over the cut line, only a single point now separates Chastain and Wallace for the last remaining playoff spot. Chastain currently holds the advantage entering the final two races of the regular season, with the prospect of a surprise winner at Daytona and Austin Dillon's appeal of NASCAR's decision to strip him of his playoff eligibility due to earning his Richmond win via rough driving still looming.
Corey the Frequent Flier
Going down the backstraightaway midway through the race, Corey LaJoie was battling for position with Noah Gragson when his car took off on him and spun towards the infield. And then, his car really took off on him.
After spinning to the inside of the track, LaJoie's car abruptly went airborne, flipping the No. 7 Chevrolet onto its roof, which it then landed on as the car slid upside down into the inside wall on the back straightaway. LaJoie's car then tumbled twice when it reached the infield grass in Turn 3 before coming to rest on its wheels.
It was nothing short of a bizarre accident, the second of an unusual kind of accident for a track like Michigan. While high speeds at Michigan make it perfectly possible for a car to go airborne in the right circumstances, a car had not flipped over at Michigan since Elliott Sadler did so in 2000 before Kyle Sieg's car went airborne and flipped over in a very similar accident to LaJoie's in the Xfinity Series race on Saturday.
"That's just about the way the year has gone: We have a good car and I find a way to flip it upside down," LaJoie told NBC Sports. "That's twice this year we've been upside down and I haven't been upside down in my whole career. That's how the year for our 7 team has been.
"…There were sparks, dirt and all sorts of stuff coming in. ... I think we had a top-12, top-10 car today and I hate that we ended up on the roof."
As LaJoie noted, he has achieved an exceptionally rare double play after previously going upside down coming to the finish line at Talladega in April. With his accident, LaJoie has become the first Cup Series driver to flip over in multiple races in a single season since Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace flipped violently at both Daytona and Talladega that year.
LaJoie's 32nd-place finish would make the highlight reel, but the highlight of the day for his Spire Motorsports team ended up being their two other cars finishing in the top 10, with Zane Smith earning his second top 10 of the year in seventh and Michigan native Carson Hocevar finishing 10th at his home racetrack.
Race results rundown
- After the Olympic break gave him a much-needed reset, Kyle Busch turned in one of the best performances of the entire 2024 season, winning a stage and leading three times for 24 laps including late in the race after a two-tire call by crew chief Randall Burnett on his final pit stop. For Busch, his finish marks just his third top-five finish of the season and his first since Dover in May.
- Daniel Suarez is bordering on being en fuego ahead of the playoffs, as he earned his third consecutive top-10 finish -- accounting for half of his top 10s all season -- with an eighth-place run. After a stretch of invisibility following his win early in the season at Atlanta, Suarez has now finished 16th or better in five straight races dating back to Chicago in July.
- As he continues to look for a ride in 2025, Ryan Preece led the way for the Stewart-Haas Racing cars, just missing out on a top-10 finish in 11th -- his best overall finish since running fourth at Nashville in June. Noah Gragson finished just behind him in 12th, with Josh Berry finishing 22nd after leading four laps during the final round of green flag stops. Chase Briscoe finished 31st after dropping out with a suspension failure stemming from crash damage.
- Harrison Burton earned a top-15 finish in 14th, leading five laps during the final round of stops. In the process, he led the most laps that any Wood Brothers driver has at Michigan since Morgan Shepherd led the same number of laps in June 1995. Burton's finish also comes 33 years to the weekend that Hall of Famer Dale Jarrett earned his first career win at Michigan driving for the Wood Brothers.
- Byron, Mich. native Erik Jones turned in a solid homecoming, earning points in Stage 2 on his way to a 16th-place finish. With that finish, all three Michigan natives in the race -- Rochester Hills' Brad Keselowski finished fifth and Portage's Carson Hocevar finished 10th -- finished in the top half of the field.
- Amid rumors that he could be in demand for another ride in 2025, Justin Haley once again demonstrated why he is in demand, recording yet another top-20 finish for Rick Ware Racing in 20th. Finishing just behind Haley was teammate Cody Ware, who picked up a pair of stage points with a ninth-place finish in Stage 2.
Next Race
The NASCAR Cup Series returns to the world center of racing for the biggest remaining wild card in the race for the playoffs, the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC.
