While Tyler Reddick is the 23XI Racing driver who has made all the headlines to start the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, thanks to the fact that be became the first driver in the 78-year history of the series to reel off three straight wins to start a season, teammate Bubba Wallace is quietly sitting second in the point standings after five races.
Of the 35 drivers who have run all five races this season, 17 have secured at least one top five finish. Wallace isn't one of them, yet despite nothing flashy, he still finds himself ahead of 16 of those 17 in the standings, including two of the three drivers not named Reddick who have found victory lane this year.
Wallace recorded his fourth top 10 finish of the season with a ninth place effort in Sunday's Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and with Reddick only finishing 13th, both now share the series lead with four top 10 finishes each.
However, Wallace surpassed Reddick altogether for the lead in another notable category.
Reddick still leads the series in average finish (4.8), with Wallace second (8.8), but the driver of the No. 23 Toyota now possesses the sport's best worst finish, that being his 11th place finish at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) a few weeks ago.
We hear about it all the time in IndyCar, where consistency is rewarded because of how the points format is set up and the fact that there are no playoffs; it's simply a season-long championship.
Now following the long-awaited offseason format change to the postseason, it matters in NASCAR as well. Sure, NASCAR's points format could still use some work from top to bottom, even after NASCAR made the right decision by boosting the value of wins amid the removal of the "win and in" element to the "Chase" playoffs.
But with only one points reset ahead of the 10-race playoffs, rather than several resets over the course of a four-round, 10-race postseason, consistency matters more now than it has at any point since 2013, and it's why Wallace, even as one of only three drivers in the top 17 in the standings without a single top five finish, finds himself second in points behind a driver who has already won three times in 2026.
Aside from Reddick (13th) and Wallace (11th), only one other driver has a worst finish inside the top 20, and that is RFK Racing's Brad Keselowski, who finished 20th at COTA. Keselowski, unlike Wallace, does have a top five finish to his name, but he has only recorded one other top 10 result and finds himself 12th in the standings with an average finish of 13.4.
The sixth race on the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the Goodyear 400, and it is set to be shown live on Fox Sports 1 starting at 3:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 22. Begin a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss it!