NASCAR News: Reddick nips Van Gisbergen for Roval 400 pole

Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing clinched his second Busch Light Pole Award of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, and the 11th of his career, with a blistering lap at 95.510 mph. He’ll lead the field to the green flag in Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway’s ROVAL, a critical Round of 12 cutoff race.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Shane van Gisbergen, fresh off four consecutive road course victories, secured second place with a lap of 95.474 mph, marking his fifth straight front-row start on a road course. Ty Gibbs (95.265 mph), Kyle Larson (95.103 mph), and Chris Buescher (94.912 mph) rounded out the top five. Michael McDowell (94.812 mph), Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe, AJ Allmendinger, and Ross Chastain completed the top 10.

In a near must-win scenario, Reddick’s late qualifying run in the No. 45 car delivered the top spot. Meanwhile, Joey Logano, holding the final transfer position to the Round of 8, will start 17th. Ross Chastain, 13 points below the cutline, qualified 10th, while Bubba Wallace (12th) and Austin Cindric (19th) also face uphill battles from below the playoff cutline.

Erik Jones will start last after a power steering issue prevented him from setting a qualifying lap. With 37 cars entered, all drivers qualified for the race.

TYLER REDDICK, No. 45 Jordan Brand Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing

What was it like out there in practice and qualifying? 

TYLER REDDICK: “Yeah, it was something. I feel like when we raced at Sonoma in the past, we’d have the high fall off, but the track certainly took you know, rubber, but a lot of rubber and rubber buildup off-line too. I feel like I’ve seen this before. Probably, when I did the Watkins Glen tire test, I believe it’s on this tire combination that we have been racing this year. It did a lot of that at that tire test, and we really haven’t seen it to the level that it did today. So yeah, the way it acted today was somewhat reminiscent of that test, but obviously, when we returned to race, it was much different, it wasn’t, you had some fall off, but it wasn’t rubbering the whole track in, kind of like it was. So, yeah, this is, I guess more in line with what I expected this tire to do, at a lot of the racetracks we go to, when I participated in that tire test, but it had just hasn’t done it quite to this level until today.”

What more do you need tomorrow to beat Shane van Gisbergen in the race? 

TYLER REDDICK: “I think what you would define a long run – the long run seems like it comes quick with the way these tires go away. I believe he was the standout in that regard, on long run pace, so, I will try to look at what I’m doing with the car. We’ll try to look at what we can change on the car to see what more we can kind of do to help that. Outside of that, I thought my car handled pretty well over the course of the long run. We just have to just look through everything and see if there’s anything more there that we can find to help us. I mean, I think we’re okay when you look at the field minus the 88 (Shane van Gisbergen), but yeah, Shane’s obviously very good at what he does, he’s proven that this year in other years with this car. For us, we’ve got to kind of figure out how we can close that gap. It’s a pretty big one, but we’re up for that challenge.”

What did you think of the location of the tire packs? 

TYLER REDDICK: “Turn seven’s, you know it’s there. I think in in the race last year, drivers and cars were really cutting that corner quite a bit. So, it keeps us more on the racetrack, I think with how much this tire wears away, keeping us off the paint over there is probably a good thing. I guess on the front chicane here, in the past, you’re able to really jump over that if you needed to, and that’s kind of taken that away. We kind of saw it, I think Kyle Busch made contact with it. A couple others did, and it didn’t destroy their car, it didn’t go flying. So, I think in the race – the intent of it was to keep us more on the racetrack, but it’ll be interesting to see when we’re two-by-two and we’ve got to work together to kind of get through a corner. We’re going to have less room, so, I expect more contact .

What does this do in terms of strategy? 

TYLER REDDICK: “That’s how we played it the last two years, but we weren’t quite as far back on points as we are right now, going into tomorrow’s race. So, I think everybody that had a plan, an idea on the strategy for this race just had it completely ripped in half and all the teams are now looking at, you know what the fall off was like today and refiguring what the strategy’s going to look like. I would imagine that tires are going to be important to have late if there’s a caution based on what we saw today.”

Bank of America Roval 400 Qualifying Results