There are two “California Kids” driving Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 42 Chevrolet in the Xfinity Series this year.
When Kyle Larson, a native of Elk Grove, can’t drive it, the duty falls to Tyler Reddick of Corning.
The former Camping World Truck Series driver has been behind the wheel of the No. 42 five times this season and earned his first top 10 two weeks ago at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Larson has won three times this season, but there’s no added pressure for Reddick, 21, as he navigates his part-time Xfinity schedule.
“It gives me a lot of confidence through knowing that car is capable of doing what it has so far this year,” Reddick told NBC Sports. “I would be honest by saying I would feel a little bit pressured if Kyle wasn’t having such a good year on the Cup side (where he is second in points). But he’s just doing really good right now. You can argue he’s one of the best Cup drivers at this point in the year. That makes me feel a little bit better about trying to compare myself to him.”
Reddick, a three-time Truck winner with Brad Keselowski Racing, took a huge stride in his development as a Xfinity driver following an open test at Charlotte last month.
“We were able to ... put up on the screen how I drive the car and how he drives the car,” Reddick said. “It really helped me bridge a gap it seemed I was forever away from where I needed to be to run competitive lap times. Having the ability to look at that data brought stuff I needed to work on to full attention, and we were able to work on it really well over the next couple of weeks. How bad we were when we tested at Charlotte to where we ended up being speed wise and everything in the Charlotte race, I feel like we literally jumped over a mountain.”
The following Q&A has been edited and condensed.
NBC Sports: How did you get interested in racing out in California?
Reddick: Well it all started with automobiles in general. Both my parents worked at a dealership. I grew up at the dealership with them. So I was with them before I was old enough to go to school. So I had an obsession with cars from day one pretty much. My dad raced for a short time when I was really, really young. I don’t remember much of those really young days, but my parents noticed how obsessed I was with racing and cars and this and that, anything with wheels on it. I was just sucked right into it. Dad got the idea one day to kind of take me to a go-kart track and really gauge my interest in it. He set me in a car and kind of pushed me around in it, asked me if I wanted to do it and of course I said yes. I don’t know who would have said no.
NBC Sports: What was your first car?
Reddick: I only got my first car a couple of years ago. It was 2011 Ford Mustang GT California Special. They’re still making them now. They brought it back in ’06 or ’07, but way back when in the 1960s they had a Mustang that was called a California Special. At the time, they only built and sold them in California. Now you can get them anywhere they want. I guess you can say it’s the California twist on the Mustang. It’s a little bit nicer interior and the exterior. It’s really just like a trim package now, it’s not really anything performance wise. I still have that car, I love it to death. I don’t think I’m ever going to get rid of it. Can’t ask for more out of a street car, it’s wicked.
NBC Sports: You hit a home run on your first one.
Reddick: Yeah, most people’s first cars are something they had to work on. I mean I got really lucky. I don’t want to sound like a brat by saying this but I didn’t want something very nice for my first car. I didn’t want to trash it, but I wanted to ... based on my life, I wasn’t sure how I was going to be driving on the road. There’s a chance I might be the world’s worst driver on the road. I just didn’t want to have something nice. I’m one of those crazy people, if I get one scratch, the world ends and I feel like I’m going to die right there on the spot, so I decided I didn’t want something nice. But it’s still in one piece. I feel it’s survived pretty well.
NBC Sports: Have you ever named a car, whether it be a street car or race car?
Reddick: Quite a few. BKR, this is just BKR’s thing, they didn’t put numbers on the truck, they gave them names. They have a pool to decide what the names will be. What we would do, it kind of depended, sometimes we would come up with a batch of four names if we were having four trucks made. Some of the first trucks we had were ‘Bonnie’ and ‘Clyde.’ We just named the trucks after certain things. We named four trucks after The A Team. ... Actually, Clyde is the truck I won at Dover with and BKR at the Christmas party last year gave it to me. It’s now sitting at my parent’s house in Nashville covered up. They gave me ‘Clyde’ and that was my crew chief’s favorite truck. He damn near cried. He’d probably kill me if I told you that, but he cried when he gave it to me. It was his favorite truck, he won multiple races with it and it was my favorite truck too. I wish I could describe it.
NBC Sports: If you were in the Cup race at Bristol, what would you choose as your intro song?
Reddick: These are things I never really think about. You’ve got me on the spot. I feel like it has to be something upbeat ... I’m going to have to go with a Sevendust or a Slipknot song, one or the other. They get me pumped up for a race.
NBC Sports: What’s the most fun race you’ve ever been a part of?
Reddick: Anytime I’m at Eldora (Speedway), it’s just a blast. The late model racing there, it’s hard to duplicate that anywhere else. Probably racing a late model at Eldora is one of the funnest things I’ve ever done. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the best luck. We’ve been really faster there. You can go anywhere on that race track. When it slips off, it really widens out. It’s really something else.
NBC Sports: If you could add any track to the Xfinity schedule, what would it be?
Reddick: Unfortunately, a lot of people are going to say what I’m going to say. It’s a track that’s been on the schedule before. I wish they would add Lucas Oil Raceway (located just outside Indianapolis) back to the schedule. If that’s what it’s still called today.
NBC Sports: Do you remember the first time you saw your name or face on merchandise?
Reddick: Yeah, when I was racing go karts at the tail end my mom and dad had shirts made for family and friends and some other people ended up buying them. My dad had a couple of hero cards made for people and fans that wanted them, he was just trying to get my name and face out there a little more. I was so young I didn’t care. ... We still got some of those hero cards. What is kind of sad and depressing is people have started ... Someone has started copying those hero cards and making a smaller version and selling them on eBay. I’ve been coming across them more and more. That kind of pisses me off, I’m not going to lie. I guess at the end of the day we were giving them out for free, but there’s someone out there printing them and making money off of them and I don’t like that. I wish I knew who that was, but I can’t really do much about that, you now?
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