Noah Gragson reacts to hard racing with Tyler Reddick, Shane van Gisbergen

Noah Gragson battled Tyler Reddick and Shan van Gisbergen to earn a top-10 finish at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) on Sunday. After the race, Gragson spoke to reporters about racing hard against the two drivers in the third NASCAR Cup Series race of the 2025 season.

“They were racing super hard at the end,” Gragson said, per Frontstretch. “I’m not sure what tires they were on, but I was on super old tires. I saw them getting into each other, and I was just going to try to be patient, let them get to Turn 19. Then they got each other again. …We had three wide at one point, bouncing off the rub blocks.

“It was pretty wild, but we all raced each other super hard and super clean. Shout out to those guys. It feels good to finally run up front again. It was an up-and-down day, but we were able to get up there at the end.”

Noah Gragson earned a P8 finish at COTA, his best finish of the season and first top-10 finish since last July when he finished 9th at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Sunday was also Gragson’s first top-10 finish for Front Row Motorsports, a team he joined this year after spending the 2025 season at Stewart-Haas Racing.

Noah Gragson speaks on the ‘s****y last couple weeks’

“We never quit on this team and super proud of everyone’s efforts,” Gragson said. “It was not looking good the first run. The first run, we were horrible. They went to work on it, pit crew did a great job, Drew [Blickensderfer] called a great race and we were able to get up there at the end.”

Gragson is still seeking his first Cup Series race win but is happy with his COTA finish after poor showings at Daytona and Atlanta. “It’s been kind of s****y the last couple weeks,” he said. “We know we can’t really pinpoint exactly where we’re at until we get done with Phoenix and Vegas, and then we can kind of start to get an idea on where we’re at.

“We ran good at Daytona and ran mid-pack to decent at Atlanta. Just really proud of everyone’s efforts. When you don’t finish them, it doesn’t matter how good you run during the race. It just matters what that scoreboard says at the end of the day.”

Gragson earned his eighth top-10 finish of his career. He is in his third full-time Cup Series season after spending four years in the Xfinity Series where he won 13 races during that span.