Daytona 500 champion took two minutes to realize – Sports News
Tyler Reddick revealed he took two minutes to realize he had received the Daytona 500 – even after crossing the end line in first place.
There had additionally been carnage a lap earlier as Carson Hocevar, Michael McDowell and Erik Jones crashed out of the lead.
All the chaos meant that Reddick was unwilling to rejoice till he had reassurance the race was truly over and he was, in actual fact, the winner.
He stated in his post-race press convention: “Well, it wasn’t until I was basically back around in front of the speedway on the cool-down lap when someone finally said, yes, you won the race.
“Because obviously a number of these races have played out where — I mean, I crossed the start-finish line first, but in the moment, I’m not looking for the flashing yellow lights or the green light on the fence, so I’m just, Did I win? Did I win? Are you sure we won?
“It took a couple minutes to get that verification. But in the moment, crossed the start-finish line.
“The only time I’ve ever felt the level of emotions I did in that moment was winning the pole at the Charlotte Roval when Rookie (his son) was in the hospital.
“For me that was a whole different set of reasons, everything that my son was going through, our family was going through.
“But crossing the start-finish line here first in this race, the race that — I watched a lot of NASCAR racing growing up, but I would never miss a Daytona 500 as a little kid growing up out in California, sitting with my family on Sunday watching this race.
“I, again, dreamed of one day just having an opportunity to run in this race. I’ve had — this is my eighth opportunity to run this race, I believe, and it wasn’t the smoothest day, but when it mattered at the end, we did a really good job of being in the mix.
“We had that caution with eight or nine laps to go. It was hitting me, like, the weight of the moment, how — the situation that I am getting ready to be in on this restart is a situation I’ve been dying to have, an opportunity I’ve been dying to have my entire life, and to kind of screw it up and lose the lead a couple laps in and the top is rolling, taking the white, I was like, damn, that sucks. I mean, they wrecked.
“It may have seemed chaotic watching it, but from my seat the whole last lap played out really slow and really smooth, and everything just kind of fell into place the way I wanted it to.”
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