The NASCAR Cup Series playoff standings have taken a major shake up recently. With Cole Custer’s shock win a couple of weeks ago at the Kentucky Speedway, then followed up by Austin Dillon’s win at the Texas Motor Speedway last Sunday, they took two spots from some big named teams into this year’s postseason.

2020 right?

Well, maybe we can see another one on Thursday night. I’d put my money on Tyler Reddick to do so.

Reddick, finished runner-up to his Richard Childress Racing teammate of Dillon last Sunday for his third consecutive top 10 finish in his No. 8 Chevrolet. Plus, he made his second career Cup starts in Kansas for RCR last year and finished ninth. In three Xfinity Series starts on the 1.5-mile track, he’s finished in the top five in each, including two of those three being runner-up’s as well.

He’s only 14 points out of the final playoff spot right now, so it’s not out of the realm of the imagination that he can sneak into the postseason on points too.

“This further cements what I really pressed to my team before starting this race,” Reddick said of his runner-up at Texas. “We have nine races.  We have 42 points to make up.  Hopefully we can make up more than that.  Seems like we already did that one race.

“Now it’s about beginning to press and try to be in position to win these races, but not go all in and take a top five day and crash out and lose all those points.

 “We got to keep being aggressive like we are to get up there with strategy call.  Randall Burnett did a great job.  Had a fast car.”

His teammate says that he thinks that Reddick is super talented and is going to be great for RCR for a long time.  He’s only going to get better Dillon says that that he’s got a lot of potential.  He shows it week in and week out.  He’s not afraid to change lanes.

That pushes Dillon to be better which in turn helps the overall team aspect of RCR.

“I already seen a lot more maturity this year out of Tyler than I figured was going to be there, truthfully,” Dillon said of his rookie teammate. “As aggressive as he was in the Xfinity Series, I didn’t know how he would fare throughout those long races.

“He’s taken care of his equipment.  That’s a big part of it.  I feel like if he takes care of his equipment, he obviously has enough talent in the cars to do it.  It’s hard to start in that group from 13 to 24 to get the stage points.  That’s the hardest point that him and Randall are going to have to focus on moving forward is getting track position at some of these places to give him opportunity.

“He can win anywhere he goes.  He has that talent in him.  I wouldn’t be surprised next week at Kansas if both of us have another shot with what we’re bringing to the track.  We got to do a really good job, like we did today, putting ourselves in situations where we are leading the race and we can take that opportunity to the next level.

“I have no doubt that Tyler is going to be a winner in the NASCAR Cup Series.”

Reddick notes that they aren’t where they need to be quite yet, but they’re close.

“We’re not where we need to be at,” said the California native. “But with eight races, 14 more points to get, having Austin locked in I think could be a benefit to us.  We just got to keep running races like this.

“We’re not going to get lucky every single day, every single outing we have, get cars caught up in messes that we stay out of.  We will continue to stay vigilant and keep our Caterpillar Oil and Gas Chevrolet out of those messes, keep finishing these races.

“Name of the game, we were two laps down at one point.  We never gave up.  We had some luck go our way.  We had some things fall at the right time and it got us back into the game.”

With what’s at stake and how this season has gone, I wouldn’t put it past Reddick to find victory lane on Thursday night. After all, we’ve had a different winner on 1.5-mile tracks each race this season. Why not keep that trend going?