{"id":25499,"date":"2019-05-03T17:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-03T22:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=25499"},"modified":"2019-05-04T12:47:07","modified_gmt":"2019-05-04T17:47:07","slug":"nascar-friday-dover-notebook-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/03\/nascar-friday-dover-notebook-3\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Friday Dover Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

Tyler Reddick happy to be in top echelon of Xfinity Series<\/strong><\/p>\n

DOVER, Del. \u2013 Even though Tyler Reddick<\/strong> won the NASCAR Xfinity Series<\/a> Championship on the strength of his final-race performance at Homestead-Miami Speedway last year, he concedes that Christopher Bell, driving the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, was the class of the Xfinity field.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Tyler Reddick, driver of the #2 Roland Chevrolet, drives during practice for the NASCAR Xfinity Series Allied Steel Buildings 200 at Dover International Speedway on May 3, 2019 in Dover, Delaware. (Photo by Matt Sullivan\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cLast year, I thought he was just in another zip code whenever we were racing together,\u201d Reddick said on Friday at Dover International Speedway, site of Saturday\u2019s Allied Steel Buildings 200 (1:30 p.m. ET on FS1, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

After a switch from JR Motorsports to Richard Childress Racing and a new pairing with crew chief Randall Burnett, Reddick feels more competitive with the top cars in the series this year. And well, he should.<\/p>\n

With last Saturday\u2019s victory at Talladega, Reddick leads the series standings by 32 points over Bell. In the first nine races of the season, he has seven top fives and has finished no worse than fourth in the six events since Las Vegas in March. That translates to a series-best average result of 4.9.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe enjoy being in the points lead right now,\u201d Reddick said of the No. 1 ranking. \u201cI know the 18 and the 20 (Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas) really like having that spot. It\u2019s cool to be in their spot, and we\u2019re trying to make the case that it\u2019s our spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to keep that points lead going. We want to keep scoring stage points. But we want to try and learn some  things that are going to help us over the summer stretch\u2014and definitely in the Playoffs.”<\/p>\n

TOP SPEED IS A PLEASANT SURPRISE TO RAPHAEL LESSARD<\/strong><\/p>\n

On his first visit to Dover International Speedway, Raphael Lessard topped the speed chart at 154.999 mph in opening NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series practice.<\/p>\n

For the 17-year-old from St. Joseph de Beauce, Quebec, it was a gratifying, yet eye-opening experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is amazing how fast you are going here,\u201d Lessard said on Friday at Dover. \u201cIt is my first time at a race track like that, and it feels weird at first. You want to let off your foot off the gas pedal, but your mind says not to, because you want to go fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just feels like a roller coaster. But it was fun. First time here and to end up P1 in first practice was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being close to the edge on a one-mile track was a new sensation for Lessard, who has four races scheduled with Kyle Busch Motorsports this season. But the teenager adapted quickly. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like you are jumping in a hole getting into the corner,\u201d Lessard said. \u201cAt first it feels very tricky, like you are going to get out of control. I told myself that those guys can do it, so I was going to try. If they can, I can. That\u2019s what I told myself. So it went pretty well. At one point, when you get used to that sensation it<\/p>\n

just gets normal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe speed you carry on new tires, you don\u2019t even let all the way off the gas pedal. It is amazing. I am not used to not using any brakes into the corner. Like every short track that I have been too, has been brake, then let off, then gas it up really hard. But here you have to have momentum, but kind of, you don\u2019t want to use any brakes. You kind of want to let it roll.\u201d<\/p>\n

KYLE LARSON’S WILD RIDE WAS A TESTAMENT TO NASCAR SAFETY<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, Kyle Larson experienced a wild barrel-roll down the backstretch on the final lap.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Larson got to see the incident from another point of view\u2014 the in-car camera in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, as NASCAR continued to study the reasons for the liftoff and how to prevent it in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I\u2019ve got a lot of confidence in NASCAR,\u201d Larson said on Friday at Dover International Speedway. \u201cI\u2019ve been involved in some big crashes. It seems like, with any crash I\u2019ve been in or that other drivers have been in, they\u2019ve<\/p>\n

made improvements from them and made the cars safer and all that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo yeah, they have a lot of smart people in the safety area of their business. I\u2019m confident that they\u2019ll look at it and make improvements from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larson also had an amusing takeaway from watching the video of the incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes me feel like I\u2019m really tough,\u201d he quipped. \u201cYeah, it\u2019s pretty crazy how much everything stretches. My seat belts, my harness, everything stretch with an impact like that. So, I stretched far enough that my head hit the<\/p>\n

steering wheel a little bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd with each tumble, just the jolts that my body went through was pretty crazy to see. And then you slow it down and look at how the chassis is flexing when it makes contact with the pavement, it\u2019s pretty incredible. We\u2019re driving heavy vehicles. So, for it to hold up as well as it did was pretty amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service Tyler Reddick happy to be in top echelon of Xfinity Series DOVER, Del. \u2013 Even though Tyler Reddick won the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship on the strength of his final-race performance at Homestead-Miami Speedway last year, he concedes that Christopher Bell, driving the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":25501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[222,16],"class_list":["post-25499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-dover-international-speedway","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-6Dh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Dover_NXS_Reddick_050319.jpg?fit=2576%2C1717&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25499"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25503,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25499\/revisions\/25503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}