HOMESTEAD, Fla. — After winning the Xfinity championship for the second year in a row and becoming the first driver in series history to win back-to-back crowns with different teams, Tyler Reddick took off his helmet, looked into girlfriend Alexa De Leon’s eyes and shouted “Baby Beau!”
While the championship is meaningful and the trophy special, the biggest win for Reddick was naming their future son.
For weeks De Leon and Reddick have gone back and forth on names. She liked Ryker, a name she found online. At first, he liked Archer and thought they could call their son Archie. Then he switched to George, matching his middle name.
One day he decided on Beau.
“I thought it was cute, but that was not my first choice,” De Leon told NBC Sports, standing on the stage shortly after Reddick won the championship. “I was pretty stuck on Ryker at that point and he was not hopping on that train. If you know Tyler, once he gets his mind on something, it’s stuck.
“Finally, I said you need to stop calling him that. That’s not his name yet.”
She came up with an unusual way to solve their quandary.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “I guess pregnancy-brain is a real thing, and one day I was like, ‘Listen, you win this championship, you can name him whatever you want, but I don’t want you calling him anything until you are in victory lane holding up that championship trophy in Miami.’
“I shook on it and here we are and now the baby’s name is going to Beau.”
Team members found out about the bet and it became a rallying cry. When team members were around De Leon, they’d point to her belly and say “Baby Beau.”
“I had a lot of motivation coming into this, and that was the extra bit of motivation that I didn’t know I needed,” Reddick said of the bet, “but it definitely sure helped.”
As Reddick led in the final laps, did De Leon have any regrets with making the bet on how to name their child?
“Maybe I shouldn’t have been wanting him to win so bad because I really wanted to win this bet,” De Leon said, laughing. “We’re both really competitive. I shook on it. I like the name Beau. It just wasn’t my first choice.”
Where did the name Beau come from?
“You’re going to have to ask Tyler that one,” De Leon said. “I have no idea where he came up with that name. He’s really excited to have won the championship and the name bet.”
So what drew Reddick to the name Beau?
“I don’t know,” he told NBC Sports. “It kind of came out of nowhere, but it’s a name I just like. I’ve always liked it. And I got a long last name. I feel like a short name is fitting. Beau’s kind of a good fit. I’m a pale redhead. Alexa’s Dominican mixed. A redhead mixed child named Beau is perfect. I like it.”
It’s a fitting name for a champion.
