Michael Jordan may be the greatest athlete of his generation. NASCAR is the premier racing series in North America. Both sides are primed for a Game 7 unlike anything we’ve seen before. As the playoff teams prepare for this weekend’s race at Martinsville Speedway, their last chance to qualify for the 4th Sportsman’s Championship, Jordan’s 23XI Racing team can breathe a sigh of relief. Driver Tyler Reddick qualified at Homestead-Miami Speedway after using a combination of perfect last-lap passes and pit strategy to pass Ryan Blaney.
“I thought there was no way Blaney was going to kick me out,” Reddick said after the race. “He must have thought he was going to dive across the road to get around me, and when I saw him go down a bit, I hit the gas and forgot about it. “He came out of the other side as a leader.”
Reddick is also lucky enough to get on the other side of Jordan’s classic bear hug, which feels almost twice as big and stable as the working driver.
Jordan said of Reddick, “The little guy got on his ass.” “I’m so proud of him. He just went on it and I’m happy. “We needed this.”And the win gave Reddick an automatic bid to win 23XI, co-owned by Jordan and Denny Hamlin.
This is the first NASCAR Cup title in a series dominated by a legacy organization. The teams he competes with – Hendrick Motorsports, Team Penske and Joe Gibbs Racing – have won 16 of the last 19 championships.
Meanwhile, the only two competitors to win the race, the Stewart-Haas race and the Furniture Row race, will both be phased out in February 2025. The inability of others to establish and profit from the sport is at the heart of Jordan’s lawsuit against NASCAR, an antitrust lawsuit alleging that 23XI and Front Row Motorsports have a monopoly on NASCAR.
The results have the potential to transform the landscape of sport and the way we do business. It also created an uncomfortable reality. If Hamlin, who rides for JGR, enters this weekend’s title race at Martinsville, there’s a 50 percent chance this year’s champion will implicitly criticize the sport he just mastered.
Can you imagine the Los Angeles Dodgers winning the World Series by suing MLB and claiming their entire competitive model is invalid? Here’s how 23 “[Jordan] put a lot of time, effort and money into getting to the 23XI,” Reddick said. “He is fully committed to this team and our organization. “It’s a real honor to reward him with a few days [at Homestead] and see how happy he is. We are all very excited about it.”Now comes the hard part.
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Green: Christopher Bell. Bell may be the most consistent driver in these playoffs. He finished in the top five (fourth) for the third consecutive year and was 22 points ahead of the Homestead cut. Through eight races in the 2024 postseason, Bell has not won, but has logged 280 laps, two poles and just one finish lower than seventh.
Yellow: Chase Elliott. NASCAR’s most popular driver had his best race in some time at Homestead, completing 81 laps to finish fifth for the second time in three weeks. The problem is, after the debacle in Las Vegas that put them in a must-win situation in Martinsville to win the championship, it was too little, too late.
Red: Ty Gibbs. What was expected to be a sophomore season for Gibbs takes a turn for the worse. After being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs and finishing outside the top 30 for the first time in a row this season, they have now fallen to 13th place.
Speeding Ticket: NASCAR. Homestead remains one of the best intermediate tracks in the sport, producing fantastic finishes every year. It’s a shame the oval was scrapped as the final race of the championship in favor of the less competitive Phoenix Raceway. But to be completely eliminated from the playoffs in 2025? (The only Cup race is in March.) Should it replace… New Hampshire Motor Speedway? Or is it a world-class technical track? Those two events combined resulted in fewer lead changes (22) than the HMS record of 33 going into Sunday’s event.
Oh!
Kyle Larson’s title bid has been hampered by being too aggressive on the track all year. In the race for the lead with Ryan Blaney on Sunday, one mistake could cost him the chance to advance.
The spin spoiled Larson’s unexpected return to the field after he was punctured in the first stage. “You make split-second decisions,” Larson said as he pieced together what role Austin Dillon, the car behind him, played in the crash. “Austin (Dillon) didn’t do anything and I was hoping that when #12 got to him, he’d see me coming and maybe run down the street to get some fresh air and get away from the wall. “He kept his line and I had a gap and tried to get to the wall fast enough to get in front of the no. 3 and either stay out of no. 12, let me go.
During construction, you hit them one by one (in order). But yeah, it just didn’t work.”Larson now heads to Martinsville, one of the weakest tracks on his resume. He has just one win in 19 career starts, but four of his five top-5 finishes have come since moving to Hendrick Motorsports in 2021.
