Tyler Reddick lets out a heavy sigh.
In that sigh, the two-time Xfinity Series champion weighs the pros and cons of one of the most important questions that’s plagued society.
As the great philosopher Weird Al Yankovic once put it, “Only question I ever thought was hard was ‘Do I like Kirk, or do I like Picard?'”
Reddick comes to his decision.
“It’s gotta be Picard,” Reddick declares to NBC Sports.
“He’s always smart, he’s one step ahead of the game most of the time. A lot of the captains, well, (William) Shatner set the brute force tone if you know what I mean. But Picard is different. He’s smart, he went about things differently and thought a different way. He’s a very, very good character. He’s my favorite for kind of those reasons.”
Why is Reddick – who is in the middle of a visit to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, as part of his championship tour – putting forth his take on Star Trek’s James T. Kirk vs Jean-Luc Picard debate, which has been waged since Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired on TV in 1987?
It’s because of a baby name. Or the one that could have been.
When Reddick won Saturday’s Xfinity championship race in Miami, he also won a friendly bet with his girlfriend, Alexa De Leon.
With his championship, they would name their son, scheduled to be born Jan. 17, Beau.
But there was a different name, which Alexa found on the Internet and was sold on.
“Alexa really wanted our son’s name to be Ryker,” says Reddick, who at first “was all for it.”
Why?
You can thank Commander William T. Riker, first officer on the U.S.S. Enterprise – D.
“Every time I hear the name, I think of that character,” says Reddick.
Reddick’s fondness for Star Trek is tied to his racing career. Before he made it to NASCAR, he raced on dirt tracks. His downtime was spent on Netflix.
“I’ve been able to pretty much watch everything,” Reddick says. “That’s how I got caught up and watched it. I would travel on the road dirt racing or whatever. I would sit on Netflix and watch all of the series, kind of in the order they’re supposed to come out. There was about a year straight … that’s all I watched when I was at the house.”
Even with his love of Trek – he has a Star Fleet insignia Pop Socket on the back of his phone – he couldn’t bring himself to pull the phaser trigger on naming his son after the jazz-loving Commander Riker.
“I don’t know, I’m worried people are going to pick on me for naming my son after a Star Trek character,” Reddick admits. “As crazy as it sounds, it was one of the reasons I didn’t like the name Ryker, because I watched Star Trek so much.”
Ryker Reddick is a strong name. It’s not too late to make the change.
“I can’t now, because I’m just so headstrong,” Reddick says. “I just like the name Beau better.”
That said, Reddick isn’t just a fan of old Star Trek. He watches the series Star Trek: Discovery that debuted in 2017.
Oh, and he’ll get his Picard fix early next year. Patrick Stewart returns in the CBS All Access series Picard to play the character he last portrayed in the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis.
“(Alexa) made fun of me for being so excited about it,” Reddick says. “She said I was like, ‘fangirling.'”
