Story By: SAM MAHONEY / TOYOTA RACING – MARTINSVILLE, VA – 23XI Racing had a solid afternoon with teammates Bubba Wallace (fourth) and Tyler Reddick (seventh) leading the way for Team Toyota at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday evening.
For Wallace, it was his third top-five finish of the season, and fourth consecutive top-11 finish at Martinsville. Reddick delivered his third straight top-10, while both Wallace and Reddick earned their best Martinsville Cup Series result.
Toyota now occupies half of the top-12 spots in the standings, and all eight full-time Toyota Camry XSE drivers rank amongst the top-20 in points.
Toyota Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Martinsville Speedway
Race 8 of 36 – 210.4 miles, 400 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, William Bryon*
2nd, Kyle Larson*
3rd, Chase Elliott*
4th, BUBBA WALLACE
5th, Chase Elliott*
7th, TYLER REDDICK
11th, DENNY HAMLIN
12th, ERIK JONES
18th, MARTIN TRUEX, JR.
19th, TY GIBBS
35th, CHRISTOPHER BELL
36th, JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
BUBBA WALLACE, No. 23 McDonald’s Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing
Finishing Position: 4th
Solid top-10 all day and finished fourth. Can you talk about your run?
“Yeah, hats off to everybody at 23XI. I appreciate all of the effort. We do a lot of stuff during the week, and I’m finally starting to understand that it all pays off. You’ve got to give the effort, because these guys are busting their ass. It is days like this that you appreciate it. I appreciate all of these McDonald’s guys – and the men and women at the shop. We needed that. My Toyota was strong today. We lost a little bit on that last stop. We got too free, but all-in-all, I was content in finishing sixth, and that’s why you never give up. Top-five – good day, and we will go on to Texas.”
TYLER REDDICK, No. 45 MoneyLion Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing
Finishing Position: 7th
Can you talk about your day? Solid run for you this afternoon.
“From where we started – 19th – if you would have told me that we would finish seventh with our MoneyLion Toyota Camry, I would’ve been really, really happy with that – so naturally this whole group is. We just had to chip away at it all day long. We didn’t do a good job in qualifying so that set us behind. It definitely seemed at the start of the race, our car was really, really strong and as we went on the handling kind of went away. It got harder and harder to pass, but we did the important stuff right. We didn’t make mistakes and we were able to capitalize on others’ mistakes. We were on top of the strategy, so just really proud of everybody – Billy Scott (crew chief), this whole 45 team. The strategy call at the end got us four spots, that worked out nice. The day we needed to have.”
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Sport Clips Haircuts Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 11th
What was the pit strategy there in the end?
“We were just trying to do anything we could to steal one with our Sport Clips Toyota. We needed so many cars to do it – even still – the tires didn’t wear enough to matter. We saw when Joey (Logano) stayed out on those 80-lap lefts and led most of the stage. Tires didn’t wear, and we just struggled to pass all day. Once I came out of that cycle – third or fourth – that’s kind of just where I stayed.”