Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Tyler Reddick, who this week returns to Homestead-Miami Speedway, the scene of his jaw-dropping last-lap pass to clinch a spot in NASCAR’s championship race last year. Reddick, in his third season driving for 23XI Racing, is currently third in the NASCAR Cup Series standings. This interview has been edited and condensed, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions podcast.

1. What was one of the first autographs you got as a kid and what do you remember about that moment?

Steve Kinser at Silver Dollar Speedway (in Chico, Calif.). He really went out of his way to take time for the fans who would come in the pits to take a picture with him or get something signed by him. That interaction as a young kid got me sucked into collecting memorabilia and whatnot. I had a lot of stuff of Steve Kinser’s.

Do you still have it?

I don’t know if it survived the different moves we had over the years. We moved from California to Illinois and a lot of that stuff, I don’t know where it is. It’s a bummer. My dad doesn’t know what happened to it, so how do I know what happened to it?

2. What is the most miserable you’ve ever been inside a race car? I know a candidate from last year …

Yeah, Darlington (last September) was really bad. That was fighting both ends, fluids wanting to come out one way and then wanting to go out another way. And in the Southern 500 of all races, which is a pretty challenging race. That probably takes the cake. How uncomfortable I was for hours after that race also was just miserable. It took me two or three hours post-race to finally feel good enough to be able to get in the car and drive home.

Any idea what led to that?

I wish I knew. I’m not sure if it was food. It would have came and went a lot quicker, but I’d fought it for two or three days. Must have been a bug or something.

3. Outside of racing, what is your most recent memory of something you got way too competitive about?

(Thinks for awhile.) I don’t think getting that competitive is a problem. That’s my issue. It’s OK to be that competitive about everything. So maybe I’m having trouble admitting finding something I’m willing to admit I got too competitive about.

4. What do people get wrong about you?

Wikipedia gets my height wrong, but only by (a few) inches, so I’ll let it slide. I’m 5-foot-5, but it says 5-foot-2. Someone must be messing with me.

But somebody can just fix it. (Note: And someone has.) You don’t care that much?

Clearly I care enough to mention it. (Laughs.) Someone will just change it back.

5. What kind of Uber passenger are you and how much do you care about your Uber rating?

I don’t care about it as much as some people I know do. I can be loud or quiet, music could be as crazy as possible or no music at all. The biggest thing — and the only time I’ll ever really say anything — is one time the lady driving had her heat set to 85 (degrees) or something. I’m like, “Hey, can we turn it down?” She’s like, “No.” That was brutal.

I hope you didn’t give her five stars.

I did. It’s just automatic.

You didn’t want to affect her rating.

Yeah.

6. This is a wild card question. Homestead is coming up this week. The last time we were there, you had this unbelievable, last-lap pass. What do you remember about that day and how it all unfolded?

The race was a pretty straightforward Homestead race. We reached the point where we had to go for it, and I pretty much accepted at that point in the race I was willing to take that sort of risk to try and get back some of this track position we lost over time.

It was just a roller coaster of emotions. I remember running long and being like, “Come on, give us a caution, give us a caution.” Then it was crashing down because it was like, “Hey, we’ve got to pit, a caution is not coming.”

Then when the caution came out, I thought we were not just a little screwed — we were mega screwed. It was like, “Man, I’ve got two laps on my tires. Everyone is going to pit.” Once I realized we were on the lead lap, I was like “Oh s—. We’re going to stay out and try to make this work.” And that should never work there.

Those last two laps, there was not a lot of grip left in the car or the tire compared to who I was racing around. I had zero margin for error. To run a competitive corner, I had to make sure I had no dirty air on my car whatsoever — because if I caught a little sniff of it, I’d get tight and someone was going to pass me. And if I got passed by any cars at any point, my chance of winning was gone.

So those last two laps, I just guessed perfectly. Got the right line. I knew, “If they’re going to go here, I need to go there.” You never know what is going to work in those moments, so it was really cool I pretty much got the last two laps perfectly right.

7. This is my 16th year of doing the 12 Questions interviews. I went back to our first one in 2019 and I asked you: “What makes you happy right now?” You said, “I’ve had a little chaos with my lawnmower breaking down and my yard is not the way I like it. But the cars are fast and my job and my career is going well. Me and my girlfriend (Alexa, now his wife) are doing a lot better.” So six years later, how does that answer compare?

Oh man, that poor lawnmower. I finally sold it. I bought it for like $200 and I sold it for $200. Had to do an engine swap on it. I put a lot of work into that dang lawnmower. It drove me crazy. But it never died on me.

It’s funny hearing that. When you said 2019, I’m like, “I kind of remember that.” But OK, wow. Life has changed a lot. Me and Alexa are still learning and growing together. This time around, it’s, “What is a parent of two going to be like?” She is currently very uncomfortable in her pregnancy.

8. Other than one of your teammates, name a driver who you’d be one of the first people to congratulate them in victory lane if they won a race.

Austin Cindric. I haven’t gotten to spend time with him like we did in the past before I had kids, but he’s a guy I got to know well over the years, being teammates of his when I was driving for Ford. He’s genuinely a really good guy. He wants it bad and he works really hard. Anytime things go well for him, it gets me excited.

Normally, I don’t really feel for my other competitors when they’re struggling. It is what it is, right? But I know how much running good at COTA means to someone like Austin with his (road racing) background, so when they were running with no pace in their stuff back there, it was one of the few situations where I felt bad for someone. They were capable of more speed than what they had.

9. How much do you use AI technology, whether in your job or your daily life?

Knowingly, I haven’t used it at all. The Apple Intelligence stuff just rolled out on the iPhone. I’m not really sure how it works, but Siri sounds different and puts sentences a little bit better together now. So I’m probably using it right now and I don’t even know it.

I really enjoy watching some of the AI-generated videos and how crazy good some of them can be and how crazy off some of them can be. And then above all else, how creepy they can be, too. It’s very entertaining, but also scary.

10. What is a time in your life that you felt was really challenging, but you were proud of the way you responded to it?

In 2018, I was dangerously close to making a decision that would have pointed my life in a very different direction in a number of ways. I was dangerously close to making the wrong decision and just not racing anymore. I was dangerously close to just making a lot of bad choices in life. Thankfully, I realized the situation I was in and then made some good choices to correct that situation and make it better over time.

Was this off the track?

It was kind of everything. I was a hot mess away from the track and even moreso when I was at the track. I had the opportunity to really screw it up, and I almost did, but thankfully I didn’t.

Did you come to that realization yourself?

It took a long time, but yeah. In hindsight, it was like, “Damn, this took me way too long to realize I was in a bad place.” But thankfully, I did and fixed it.

11. What needs to happen in NASCAR to take this sport to the next level of popularity?

I could be wrong, but a big one (is international races). Going to Mexico City for the first time, I hope it goes really, really well, because if it does, I feel like it’s a great opportunity to get out there and go race in different countries where the NASCAR Cup Series has never been before. I know they went to Japan all those years ago. It’d be fun to go back but also to take our circus to these other places and put it in front of people who may have never even had the chance to watch it before.

12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. Last week was Noah Gragson and he wanted to know your ideal dream car and track combination to drive.

The Mercedes (W11 EQ) back in 2020, before they went to the next spec on their cars. The tires were wide and they were making all that downforce, those cars would have been a lot of fun to drive. And the Nürburgring Nordschleife, the 17-mile course. They actually just repaved it, fixed a lot of sections and bumps. I was nerding out over that. That place had really worn out and got bumpy, and even street cars were really struggling in some areas of that track.

That’s probably my favorite track ever. It’s bucket list to go and drive there, and hopefully I’ll have the opportunity one day to do it.

Three or four years ago in the 12 Questions, you said you had memorized every corner of that place.

I did. Not anymore, but at one point when I had a little more free time, I definitely did.

The next interview is with your former teammate, Austin Dillon. Do you have a question I can ask him?

How has being a father impacted your life?

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