NASCAR Faithful Thank The Heavens After Major Tyler Reddick Update

Concussions have been one of the biggest issues plaguing sports over the past few years. As studies continue to highlight the consequences head-first impacts have in professional sports, top bodies have been trying to keep up to the safety standards in order to ensure that their athletes are healthy. Witnessing what happened at Martinsville, the question arises – is NASCAR riding behind the curve?

Tyler Reddick of Richard Childress Racing exited Martinsville Speedway mid-Stage 2. He suddenly chose to leave the oval and headed to the team garage feeling unwell. In order to determine the extent of the damage, the driver was taken to the infield infirmary. 

Fans were clueless as to what had happened. Reddick, later on, released a statement on Twitter, “During the restart at the beginning of stage two, I was involved in a stack up where significant contact occurred to my vehicle.”

He also told SiriusXM, “We had a pretty wild checkup on that restart. I ran into the back of Noah [Gragson] and my head went forward a bit. Someone ran into the back of me and my head went flying back into the headrest. Something didn’t really seem right. Felt like I needed to get out of the car. It was definitely the right call. I wasn’t feeling my best.”

The culprit? Concussion. Given that Reddick had been involved in a very high-impact accident at Homestead the previous weekend as well, there were concerns, but he was confident that Homestead had no relation to what happened in Martinsville.

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NASCAR expanded its concussion protocol in 2017. The same protocol was followed in Reddick’s case for Martinsville, with his evaluation being carried out in the infield care center and consequently, having to drop out of the race. He is safe and healthy now, so it worked.

NASCAR fans breathe a sigh of relief as Reddick provides update

The 26-year-old has 51,000-odd followers on Instagram and is one of the fan-favorite drivers in the NASCAR circuit. All of them would probably have held their breath from the moment they heard he had to pull out of the race because of a possible concussion.

Luckily, Reddick is doing well and has been cleared to race in Phoenix on November 7th, as informed through his latest Twitter update. Fans were ecstatic to hear that. Here are some of their tweets about it –

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It is never a pretty sight to see someone pull out of a race like that, no matter what your allegiances and affinities are. To see him recover and be cleared to race is a great sign, and hopefully, the 26-year-old can finish well.