HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Tyler Reddick, who opened his Xfinity Series rookie season with a win at Daytona, capped it by winning the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway to capture the series title.
Using pit strategy and a racing line up against the wall, the JR Motorsports driver saved maybe his best race of the season for last, winning by more than 6.9 seconds over Cole Custer.
"We had plenty of opportunities to win races earlier in the year, and I just didn't execute," Reddick said. "I picked a really good time to decide to win a race.
"This is just a great moment. This isn't going to be the year the best car all year won. We had to fight really, really hard. I made a lot of mistakes, a lot of growing pains, but my guys just never gave up on me."
Custer led 95 laps, but he ran several laps more than championship contenders Reddick and Christopher Bell before making his final pit stop under green. Custer ended up eight seconds behind the leaders, who had the advantage with fresher tires earlier in the lengthy green-flag run, but his Stewart-Haas Racing team hoped he would be able to rally as tire wear became a factor.
Reddick and Bell swapped the top spot before Reddick was able to pull away after taking the lead with 37 laps remaining. He even tapped the wall a few times as he used the faster high line around the track.
It was the second consecutive championship and third overall for JR Motorsports, which won the title with William Byron in 2017 and Chase Elliott in 2014.
"Tyler ran an incredible line -- perfection up against that fence," JR Motorsports co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. "When you run that fence as close as he runs it, you've got to run it that close to get everything out of it, to get the speed out of it.
"He knows that. You're going to hit when you run that close. ... At the end of that race, he checked so many boxes for me looking at talent or judging talent."
Reddick didn't have a phenomenal season -- he had just five top-5s and no wins after Daytona -- and the 22-year-old driver has already announced that he will leave JR Motorsports to go to Richard Childress Racing's Xfinity program next season. Earnhardt indicated that it was the decision of Reddick and his sponsors to change teams for next year.
Reddick will replace Daniel Hemric, who finished fourth, and was one of the four championship contenders. Bell had a flat tire late in the season and finished 11th.
"The year wasn't the smoothest for us, but I knew coming in here if we just made it to Homestead, this is a great track for me -- it rewards my aggression," Reddick said. "We hit the wall a lot, but the car kept in one piece long enough for me to get to the end."
Custer's second-place finish delivered the owners championship for Stewart-Haas Racing, as Reddick's team did not qualify for that "team" championship, which includes teams that use multiple drivers throughout the year.
"Cole did an awesome job," SHR co-owner Tony Stewart said. "The whole team did an awesome job all year. That is the hard part about the last race is that it is down to a one-race deal, and we just fell a little short.
"We might have made a mistake on the strategy on pitting too late."
Stewart has seen Reddick race for several years, as Reddick's roots are in dirt late models, including several races at Stewart's Eldora Speedway.
"What he did tonight was remarkable," Stewart said of Reddick. "To be that committed to that line, that close to the wall, every time you get in the wall you don't know how much damage it has done. ... I think it was 110 or 120 laps there where he committed to running the top like that.
"It is extremely hard to do what he did and be that committed to it."