Raise your hand if you saw that coming.

Tyler Reddick had gone six straight weeks without a top-10 finish and somehow maintained playoff life despite five of those six weeks producing finishes of 20th or worse.

Yet there he was Sunday at Homestead-Miami, firing his Toyota deep and high through Turns 3 and 4 on the final lap to overwhelm (and stun, frankly) Ryan Blaney, who had to be mentally uncorking the champagne prior to getting dusted.

Conveniently, Tyler waited for World Series time to deliver the high hard one. Baseball talk, folks.

It was the power move of power moves in auto racing — take the high line, which happens to be the longest way around, deliver the horses needed to cover that extra ground, then hope like hell it sticks.

He did and it did.

Tyler’s rather famous team co-owner put it another way.

“The little kid drove his ass off,” said Michael Jordan, who, by my count, had only looked so jubilant six other times in his competitive life.

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First Gear: Wreckers one week, checkers the next for Tyler Reddick

Tyler Reddick shot his shot, and he basically had little other choice. If he’d not gotten past Denny Hamlin (another team co-owner, by the way) and Blaney on the final lap, and instead finished second or third, he’d be headed to Martinsville this coming week below the fourth-place playoff bubble.

To illustrate Reddick’s recent slump, let’s look at the specific finishes since early September at Atlanta: 27, 20, 25, 20, 11, 35. And that 35th-place finish at Vegas last week was due to a move gone wrong, resulting in a tumble.

Post-Homestead, he was asked how a racer can violently flip and, a week later, take the car so hard into the corner like he did Sunday.

“We’re kinda crazy, to some degree,” he began. “That’s just how you have to be if you want to compete on this level. There are certain things you have to block out and forget.”

Here’s something he didn’t forget, however: how to race at Homestead. We’ve seen his recent 2024 results, but look at his career finishes at the 1.5-mile South Florida oval: 4, 2, 35 (crash), 3, 1. The first three were in RCR Chevrolets, the last two in 23XI Toyotas.

Second Gear: Another championship trophy for Michael Jordan?

We can’t overlook the elephant in the room, which in this case happens to be a Bull. The most famous Bull of all time, in fact.

Michael Jordan co-owns 23XI Racing with Denny Hamlin and Jordan’s longtime business partner Curtis Polk. Just to remind you, 23XI is one of two Cup Series teams, with Front Row Motorsports, currently suing NASCAR for what they deem anti-competitive practices.

NASCAR’s Boys in Legal have fired back in official court papers, and barring some type of settlement or a changing of plaintiffs’ minds, this thing will surely drag into 2025 and maybe beyond.

Which means, yes, there’s a one-in-four chance (by my math) NASCAR president Steve Phelps will be handing the championship trophy to Reddick, Jordan and the whole Hee Haw gang from 23XI.

Old stick-and-ball fans may remember Pete Rozelle uncomfortably handing the Super Bowl trophy to Raiders owner Al Davis or Bowie Kuhn presenting A's owner Charlie Finley with the World Series hardware. There were no hugs.

Something similar could happen in Phoenix. No one could’ve expected Jordan’s seventh championship coming at a stock-car speedway, and surely no one anticipated him being so locked into this role atop the pit box every week.

Third Gear: Hooray for Homestead (again)

Homestead-Miami Speedway delivered again. There are some places where the Next Gen car mixes like water and Quaker State. But not at Homestead, where the variable banking (18 to 20 degrees) seems to be the key to really good racing.

The track is one of NASCAR’s properties and you might be wondering why Homestead doesn’t have two races a year when other NASCAR-owned tracks do — such as Kansas, Martinsville and Darlington. And SMI-owned tracks like Charlotte, Las Vegas, Bristol and Atlanta.

Good question, but remember, just because the racing is good at Homestead now doesn’t mean it’ll be as good after future tweaks to aero and horsepower packages. Things change. Bristol used to be great, remember?

However, it does seem criminal (OK, at least unfortunate) that Homestead has been kicked from the 2025 playoff menu and shoved into March.

Fourth Gear: One pinch, and Kyle Larson is in trouble

The official Round of 8 rundown entering Martinsville next week for the next-to-last race of the year: Joey Logano and Reddick are locked into the four-man championship battle at Phoenix in two weeks. If one of the other six playoff drivers wins at Martinsville, he’s also in and the fourth position comes down to overall points.

Those points standings, beyond Logano and Reddick: Christopher Bell (+27 over cutline), William Byron (+7), Kyle Larson (-7), Denny Hamlin (-18), Ryan Blaney (-38), Chase Elliott (-43).

Remember when everyone was ready to just hand Larson the trophy? One slip Sunday and suddenly he’s off the rails and hustling. Credit to him, though, trying to shoot the gap between Blaney and Austin Dillon and grab the lead with 12 to go.

Instead, however, he spun. Maybe he should've settled for a top-three and gone to Martinsville just above the cutline, but he didn’t.

And maybe he goes to Martinsville and wins, then wins again at Phoenix. That wouldn’t shock anyone, either.

— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR playoffs: Tyler Reddick wins; Michael Jordan is happy plaintiff