“We were in a really good position to start the race off with our Caterpillar Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE. I was being a little cautious at first with how aggressive I was going to block for position in the outer lane. On Lap 4 or 5, I had a good run on the 1 and was running in the top five. I wanted to move our Chevrolet further up still and made a move to the outside but got put three-wide and shuffled back. That affected our race a little bit, especially when it started to single out. I started to panic a little bit then, but my crew chief, Randall Burnett, and spotter, Derek Kneeland, did a great job of reminding me there was still a lot of race left to run. The caution towards the end of the race helped stack everyone back up again, which was great since I was able to push the issue on the aggression side a little bit more. It’s hard when a bunch of Fords are lined up on the outside to get one of them to jump out and go with you, but I had some good cars to push me from behind which helped us climb back up through the field. There were a couple moves I could have tried to get a few more spots, but that would have been too risky for our starting spot in the DAYTONA 500. We kept our No. 8 Caterpillar Chevrolet clean tonight, and that’s what mattered most.”
-Tyler Reddick
