Tyler Reddick takes on new challenge, expects to 'look like a complete amateur'

23XI Racing NASCAR Cup Series Tyler Reddick earned the right to become the fifth and final professional race car driver to take part in the Legend vs. Leaderboard Rival Events, which was introduced over the summer as part of primary sponsor Mobil 1’s expanded partnership with Forza Motorsport.

Reddick is set to join Jamie Chadwick, Tony Stewart, Jenson Button, and Juan Pablo Montoya on the list of drivers who have participated in this fun challenge. Gamers and fans have had the opportunity to compete against these drivers on the lap time leaderboard on Forza Motorsport at Maple Valley Raceway, and now they are set to compete against Reddick.

But it was no sure thing that the driver of the No. 45 Toyota would get that opportunity. He had to beat out some of his Toyota Cup Series teammates to earn the spot.

“As I recall, I think it was myself, Christopher Bell, Bubba [Wallace], John Hunter [Nemechek], I think the four of us had a little event where we got on a simulator and we kind of went head-to-head to see who could put the fastest lap time up,” Reddick told Beyond the Flag. “We each got one attempt at it, but we all kind of raced against each other to see who could have the fastest time.

“I remember it coming together a few months ago, and for me, I got really excited about it, because I would say from the time I moved to Illinois and was running mini sprints, when I would have free time, all my friends there played Xbox, so for me, I kind of had to switch over from PlayStation to Xbox and get acclimated.

“One of the first racing games that I discovered on Xbox was Forza, and I played a little bit of Motorsport 3 and a bit of Motorsport 4, and that's around the same time Forza Horizon became a thing, and for me, I've just played Forza in my free time quite a bit growing up.

"The different Motorsports I played a little bit, but I played a lot of the Horizon stuff, each installment of it, and so I wanted to have a little bit of downtime. I got tired of getting my teeth kicked in playing online games like Call of Duty and stuff!”

Reddick said he wasn’t expecting this particular challenge to be so intense: he had to ditch the controller for a sim rig.

“It was always nice to unwind playing some Forza, and for me, I guess the funniest thing about this whole thing is I thought, for some reason, I thought we were going to be using controllers, and so I've only ever played Forza with a controller, and we got there on that day to shoot this, I was using a rig, and I was completely out to lunch at first,” Reddick explained.

But it should come as no surprise to anybody that Toyota’s only Championship 4 driver from this past season figured it out quite quickly.

“But eventually it came to me, and I kind of figured out what to do,” he continued. “But ever since I started playing Forza on Xbox, I've always done it with the controller. It’s all I really know, so I had a learning curve to go through.”

Reddick does have experience using a sim rig, having done so most notably in 2020 when much of the Cup Series field took part in the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series during the unplanned 10-week stoppage. Knowing that iRacing is a completely different beast made the Forza competition an even greater challenge when he found out he would not be using a controller.

“With iRacing, I don't know, maybe there are people who use controllers for iRacing, but as far as I understand with that deal, it's a full-on sim rig,” he noted. “And so for that, I dabbled in iRacing a little bit in the past to try to work on some techniques that help me get better at road course racing.

“It's just so serious, I hate to say it, but it just is. It can be fun, but for me, being able to turn my Xbox on and just sit in my chair and hold a controller and play Forza is a little bit different. It's so much fun to be able to just put some time in, earn some credits or earn some points, and be able to get a car that you always dreamed of having that probably will never be able to own unless something miraculous happens!”

In his virtual 1985 Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT Apex, Reddick was able to beat out his teammates with a lap time of 54.305. But it didn’t come easily.

“It was really close,” he admitted. “I'm typically, I feel like with Forza Motorsport, I'm pretty middle of the road, nothing spectacular. I feel like in the past, when I've spent a bit of time on it, I can kind of somewhat figure it out, but the Horizon stuff, I feel like I was pretty good at it.

"I just like the open world aspect and kind of having a little more freedom to run, if you had an idea what tracks you were going to run, you know what car you're going to want, if it had longer straightaways or tight corners.

“I think it's somewhat similar to Motorsport, but yeah, Christopher and John Hunter both laid down a really good lap in our session, and it pretty much came down the wire. They laid down their laps, and I knew what I needed to run. I had run nowhere near that in the past, and somehow, I just ran a pretty good lap. But it was really close.”

Even in the heat and “seriousness” of competition in a full-on sim rig, Reddick was able to make it happen and put together the lap he needed to put together in a video game series he has loved for years.

“Being able to jump in cars like that and take them around a race track or explore the open world of Forza Horizon, for me, is something that I have always just enjoyed,” he said. 

“My passion for racing came from my passion for cars. I grew up, my parents both worked at a dealership that my grandfather owned, and I literally, from the time I was a baby until I started going to kindergarten, I spent every single day in that dealership around cars. So I just have a huge passion and love for cars.

“For me, being able to jump in and tune and upgrade whatever car I want, make it look what I want, being able to do all those things on Forza is something that is one of the big reasons why I've always really, really enjoyed it. Being able to take something factory, run it factory if you want, but then be able to have this array of modifications, customization that you can do to it, and then take it all and go see how it is on the track or on the road. I've always really enjoyed that part of Forza.”

But Reddick doesn’t expect that his best effort will stand against some of the world’s top sim racers when the competition opens up this Thursday, November 28.

From then until Wednesday, December 11, he joked that he expects to be made to look like “a complete amateur”.

“I think the lap I ultimately had was a really strong one, but John Hunter realistically probably should have gotten it,” he said. “I just think I hit a perfect lap, to be honest – for me, for me. I guess I should say it was what I thought was a perfect lap for me, but I know that these other individuals who are really, really good at the Rival Events are going to make me look like a complete amateur. I have a bad feeling about that! So we'll see what happens.”

The 28-year-old Corning, California native had nothing but positive things to say about Toyota for making it an intra-team competition to decide the fifth participant in the event.

And he had nothing but positives to say about Mobil 1 regarding their willingness to make something cool like this happen away from the physical race track, both for the drivers and the fans, to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

“When I heard we were doing the the whole golden ticket sweepstakes, I think it was called, we all got together at the GR Garage in Mooresville, all the other drivers who were running Mobil 1 liveries throughout the year, throughout the different disciplines of racing, whether it was the the GR Cup Series or sprint car, midget, late model stock,” he stated.

"It was really cool to get all of the drivers together. Some of us knew each other from the past, but it was fun to get all of us together, and some of the things we've been able to do with that have been a lot of fun. It kind of breaks the mold of what I've typically seen that relationship look like.

"When you're a driver working with a company like Mobil 1, or when I've worked with other oil brands in the past, it's really fun to see them take that extra step and take it further than I've seen others do.”

He admitted he felt honored to join other legends of motor racing who have taken part in the Legend vs. Leaderboard Rival Events.

“All those names I've gotten to race against,” he said. “Jenson, I think he ran COTA last year, got to spend some time around him. Seeing him from his background, coming and running this stuff, he was really surprised by how crazy we are, but obviously I've known Tony, as I've grown up from dirt racing and just paths crossing over the years.”

Reddick also got to be Montoya’s teammate at Watkins Glen International this past season, marking the two-time Indy 500 winner’s first Cup Series race in a decade.

"Juan was somebody I had no opportunity to ever meet or be around when I was running Truck or Xfinity, and so for him to come in and run Watkins Glen and to get his perspective, I just knew it right from the get-go, conversing with him, just his level understanding for cars and racing and what you need your race car to do is just on a different level from where I am currently at," Reddick said.

"So that was motivating for me. To spend time with him throughout the race weekend was something that was really, really fun. It was for fun for me as the little kid in me, getting to race against somebody I grew up watching, who has done so much, but then also it was just cool to get to know him on the human side of things and spend time with him and his son over the weekend."