NASCAR insider declares Straight Talk Wireless 400 as 'best Homestead race we've ever seen'

From start to finish, the Homestead-Miami NASCAR Playoff race had drama, lead changes, suspense, and a last-lap pass for the win. You couldn’t ask for much more from a race. But was it the best race ever at the Florida track?

Tyler Reddick’s spectacular final lap for the win was amazing. The Cup Series field also put on a great show from the front to the back. Drivers were able to drive anywhere they wanted to go. Kyle Larson drove from the back to the front before sliding late in the race.

Jeff Gluck of The Athletic believes it is the best Homestead race ever. He took it another step further on The Teardown, reacting immediately after the race.

“Also, can you bottle it up for Phoenix? What are you talking about?” Gluck said in response to comments from his cohost. “No, you can’t bottle it up for Phoenix, that’s the entire point. Phoenix on its best day, could never come close to this. You could run a thousand races at Phoenix with all sorts of different packages and all sorts of different cars, and you could never approach what we saw today. This is why Homestead is one of the greatest racetracks that’s ever been in NASCAR history and today was the best Homestead race we’ve ever seen.

“I mean, to me, you could argue it was the best playoff race ever, I believe personally it was the best playoff race ever. But even if it wasn’t, at minimum, it was the best Homestead race ever. The best Homestead race before this in my mind was 2011, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, classic, that’s the best race I’ve ever witnessed in person. And I’ve long said that, that was just a phenomenal race. This was better, this was somehow better.”

This race was awesome. There was action from the start. Three-wide racing, drivers shooting gaps and splitting cars to pass.

Tyler Reddick was great. His crew chief Billy Scott called a fantastic race. Late, he was in the right place at the right time. When you put it in your drivers’ hands with 7 laps to go, the result is going to be what it is going to be.

During the race, it felt like something big was going to happen. The final restart had the four drivers below the cutline running 1-2-3-4. No matter what the finish looked like, we were going to have a storyline worth talking about.