Indianapolis Turning Point: Reddick set to steal regular-season title? What to expect in Indy return?

Here‘s what‘s happening in the world of NASCAR with Pocono in the rearview and Indianapolis (Sun., 2:30 p.m. ET, NBC) right around the corner.

THE LINEUP ️

1️⃣ Is Tyler Reddick going to steal the Regular Season Championship?

2️⃣ Hello, old friend — what to expect for the oval return

3️⃣ Corey LaJoie breaks down Kyle Busch incident

4️⃣ Double majoring: Drivers who ran Indy 500/Brickyard 400

5️⃣ Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage

1. Is Tyler Reddick going to steal the Regular Season Championship?

The Regular Season Championship is up for grabs all of a sudden and there’s one driver in particular who’s loving it.

When people show you who they are — believe them.

You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Whichever cliché you want to use, it’s clear — and the matching outfits don’t help his case — that The Hamburglar’s thievish ways have rubbed off on No. 45 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick, who appears well on his way to stealing the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Regular Season Championship.

With five races remaining before the 16-driver field for the 2024 NASCAR Playoffs locks in, only 20 points separate the top four drivers vying for the top regular-season honors, and only one of them has been turning in consistently strong finishes over the past two months. Reddick’s charge to third place in the overall standings, just 15 points back of Chase Elliott’s lead, looks like it could be an unstoppable train that plows through the next five races to close out the summer and ride into the playoffs with an extra trophy and a slew of bonus playoff points.

Kyle Larson has been first or second in the standings (except for one week in March) since Atlanta, but Reddick is now hot on his heels for that second spot, gaining 49 points on Elliott in the last four races alone. Both Larson and Hamlin — each a series-leading three-time winner in 2024 — continue to be fast, but their results have been sporadic, with just three top-10 finishes combined between them over the past five races.

Elliott has been slightly better, but a 13.8 average finish over the last five races likely won’t be enough to keep him in the top spot with how Reddick is running.

The Talladega spring winner has been piling on the points lately, padding his stats to now be tied for the series lead in top fives (eight) and own the most top 10s (14) outright. He’s turned in a blistering 6.9 average finish in the eight-race stretch from the Coca-Cola 600 to Pocono — and the race before that streak started, he led 174 laps from the pole at Darlington, a season-high.

It’s fair to wonder how things would’ve looked if Larson wasn’t a race shorter than everybody else, but the fact of the matter is — he missed the 600, and the window was opened for another driver to capitalize.

Right now, that appears to be Reddick, but the next five races are anything but straightforward. A return to the Indy oval for the first time in Next Gen history could mean anyone’s ballgame — not to mention that the first race coming out of the Olympic break features the first Cup points race in history with a tire option. Michigan’s blazing speeds follow, with Daytona’s wild-card race right after and then what’s sure to be a pressure-packed scene-setter for the first regular-season finale at Darlington.

It’s all shaping up to be quite the battle before we even get to the postseason, and there could be some more surprises along the way, too.

2. Hello, old friend — what to expect for the oval return

After a three-year stint of running the infield road course, the Brickyard 400 makes a triumphant return in the Next Gen era.

The allure of the Brickyard 400 and racing at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway never truly lost their luster, but the racing itself lent itself to incur a shakeup after 2020 when NASCAR elected to move one of its crown jewel races off of the 2.5-mile oval in favor of the track’s infield road-course layout.

A lot has changed since NASCAR last ran a classic Brickyard 400 — namely, the sport is now in its Next Gen era with a completely revamped racer — so it’s ironic that this weekend has become entirely unpredictable.

That said, we can only go off the data that we do have, and it’s still worth exploring.

For instance, it’s notable that there isn’t a single current Toyota driver that’s ever won on the oval layout, with Kyle Busch — now a Chevrolet driver for Richard Childress Racing — picking up the only two the manufacturer has, period. His former teammate Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, opens as the race favorite at 4-1 and is coming off a strong runner-up at Pocono, but history sure isn’t on his side for this one.

In fact, it’s almost exclusively on the side of Chevrolet and specifically Hendrick Motorsports. While Ford has won each of the last three oval races at Indy, Chevy has dominated the event, winning 17 of a possible 27 races at Indy, 10 of which were won by Hendrick drivers.

The championship organization has never gone four races in a row without winning at Indy, and everything points to a Hendrick driver once again landing in Victory Lane this Sunday. It would be more than fitting if Kyle Larson, making his return to the track for the first time since his disappointing, weather-impacted attempt at the Indy 500/Coca-Cola 600 double in May, were to bring it full circle and become the season’s first four-time winner. He opens at 6-1, slotted right behind Hamlin and it feels we’re due for the crowning battle between the pair of friendly rivals.

And looking back at some of the recent results at the Brickyard, it’s funny to think that there was any chatter of stale racing — should Larson and Hamlin have a late-race battle, it’ll only add to recent dramatic finishes on the oval.

The pass for the win came with two laps to go in three of the last six Brickyard 400s, and coming with 10 laps or fewer remaining in eight of the last 15. Drivers weren’t running away with these races by any means, and they were coming down to the wire — the driver to lead the most laps only won three of the last eight oval races at Indy, too.

Needless to say, for the most part, this weekend will still likely shape up as unpredictable, but there is one thing you can expect: NASCAR’s return to the famous Indy layout for the 30th anniversary of the inaugural race in 1994 will most definitely be at least one thing — special.

3. Corey LaJoie breaks down Kyle Busch incident

In this clip from Corey LaJoie’s ‘Stacking Pennies’ podcast, Corey dives into the incident with Kyle Busch that happened at Pocono Raceway.

4. Double majoring: Drivers who ran Indy 500/Brickyard 400

Kyle Larson will become the first driver in a decade to compete in both the Indy 500 and Brickyard 400 the same season — will he be the first to win either?

5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage

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