Daytona 500 winner Tyler Reddick knows he still leads all NASCAR Cup Series drivers in victories in 2026. He also doesn't need to be reminded that it's been six months since he most recently found victory lane at Kansas Speedway to cap off a historic nine-race start that featured five wins.
"Thanks for the reminder," he joked to Beyond the Flag, before being reminded that it's still a lot better than where he was during a winless 2025 season. "Yeah, thanks for that reminder. Killing me! Oh, man. You’re killing it. I love it.
"Believe me, I wake up every day, I’m like, ‘it’s been six months.’ So we’re trying to get back to victory lane, man. I would say consistently, the speed hasn’t exactly been what we’ve wanted the last couple of months, or the last maybe month and a half.
"There are some races, it's just right there. We aren’t able to capitalize on it. Darlington and Vegas come to mind. And then we’ve had some others like Bristol and Kansas, Gateway, even this weekend in Charlotte, where it’s like, man, where did it go wrong?"
The million-dollar question: where did it go wrong?
Perhaps there's no better way to illustrate just how competitive the Cup Series is than Reddick's season, which saw him initially appear to be running away with the regular season championship. Now he's seventh in the standings, although he'd still be third in season-long points.
With Reddick now facing a 114-point deficit and four races left on the calendar, the series title would appear to have become a longshot for 2026. But he and 23XI Racing are still pushing to get back to their early-season form to close things out this fall.
"We’re kind of in the trenches trying to figure that out right now," he continued. "Every single week, I feel like the team has been doing a good job of coming into the weekend with a good mindset.
"But it’s so important for us to put the entire weekend together. I was going to say like we did in the beginning of the year, but even in those races we won in the beginning of the year, they weren’t necessarily picture-perfect Sunday races.
"I mean, Atlanta, I crashed with like 80 to go and somehow still won. COTA, we didn’t know if our left rear wheel was tight or not, and we were sweating that one out. Darlington, we had the alternator failure and on pit road swapping batteries. And Kansas, we had the fuel pump failure, leading, stuffing it in the fence, and getting the caution in overtime to win."
As Reddick has shown, sometimes things simply go your way; he didn't need to dominate to win any of those races.
But those things that were going Reddick's way early on simply haven't over the past six months, and he suddenly has more finishes of 25th or worse this year than he does wins, despite continuing to lead the series in the latter.
"The irony in all that is I’m saying we need to have clean races to win, and I guess I proved at the beginning of the year we didn’t," he noted. "But it certainly makes it a lot easier when you run up front all day and score the points and you’re in position to hang on for the win. We’re just kind of on that path trying to get back to that."
Why Tyler Reddick's hot start to 2026 left a permanent mark
Despite the recent struggles, which have still seen him collect three third-place finishes since the end of August, it's not lost on him just how important it was to start 2026 off in such a strong fashion, after not only the winless 2025 campaign but everything both he and the team dealt with off of the race track – both personally and professionally.
And we're not just talking about the fact that he won the Daytona 500.
"It’s hard to put into words how important that was," he admitted. "For me as a driver, as crazy as it sounds, once you start winning, you just think you’re going to do that for a very long time."
His three-race winning streak to begin the season at Daytona, Atlanta, and COTA is the first such streak in the 78-year history of the Cup Series, and the fact that it happened in the Next Gen era, which has yet to see a single driver win more than six races over a full season, makes it that much more impactful.
"The situation being here, driving for this team, being with Toyota, with how 2023 was and the growth that we had the first year leading into the second with what we accomplished, it just wasn’t even on our radar of what we do if we don’t win a race in an entire season.
"And we had to face that reality in the offseason. And for us to dig down within ourselves with this team and figure out how we’re going to go start the next year [2026] and how we’re going to approach it from here on out was really, really big to have that kind of a start."
'Rockstar' partnership brings Tyler Reddick full circle
Reddick remains optimistic that a turnaround is close.
"It’s been six months, as you pointed out. It’s been all the things, and we’re in a similar spot," he continued. "So we’ve got to keep continuing to find ways to reflect and get better. And on the days where it’s just like, well, that one is just racing, we’ve got to move on from those.
"But on the days where there’s things that we know that we can address and work on and improve, we’ve got to stay locked in enough to be able to have those tough conversations, work on it, and then go try again."
While Phoenix Raceway hasn't necessarily been one of his better tracks – and it was the one that ultimately ended his three-race win streak to begin 2026 – he hopes that turnaround can begin on the Avondale, Arizona oval this weekend, with support from Rockstar Energy.
"When I heard about [the partnership with Rockstar], I was very excited," he said. "I grew up racing in late models and on the dirt, and Rockstar was involved in one of the series that I ran a few years full-time in. I got exposed to the brand back then, what they were about, and what racing means to them.
"And so for me, I thought it was really cool. They had involvement in other sports as well, but they wanted to be a part of dirt oval racing and their support of the series that I ran.
"They actually sponsored a friend of mine that I raced with for a couple seasons as well. So just what they did for him and his career, allowing him to get to the race track, what they did for the series I ran, I thought was all really cool."
Rockstar Energy is getting back into #NASCAR after over a decade away, partnering with 2026 Daytona 500 winner Tyler Reddick.https://t.co/qvbo1Iq8xh
— Motorsport (@Motorsport) April 16, 2026
The fact that they've served as the primary sponsor of Reddick's No. 45 Toyota on several occasions this season has been a full-circle experience for the Corning, California, native, who was familiar with the brand long before they teamed up back in April.
"Fast forward to the current day, this year, when all this was coming together, I naturally was excited about it because of that nostalgia, that tie to some of my roots in racing. So yeah, that part had me excited about it.
"And then getting to know the people at Rockstar and how we’re going to go about this and everything we’ve done to current date, I said it again earlier too, just the people who are a part of it are amazing to work with. The passion that they have for racing and wanting to be a part of an organization like 23XI, who've come into this relatively new, but not just trying to be a participant, but trying to be one of the top teams in the sport.
"And that's another reason why I’m a part of it as well; I believe in that vision that Denny and Michael have. And it’s been a fun ride so far."
Reddick also discussed his personal favorite flavors and recommended a few that fans should try.
"For me, the original. It’s nostalgic, if you will; the crack, the smell, the sip," he said. "Over the years, Silver Ice was one that I’ve had here and there. And then the one I keep going back to and mentioning my car chief Rambo, but I didn’t even really know about this flavor, but they found it in a gas station, like, ‘you’ve got to try this’, and I’m like, ‘okay’."
"And it’s the Rockstar Boom, the piña colada. It’s really sweet. I don’t know if I can have it every single time, but man, when those guys are rolling into the track and stop at the gas station, they’re all getting one and they grab me one. That was the one that was the kind of surprise favorite that my guys were like, ‘you’ve got to try this.’ Those are the three that I really like."
With Rockstar Energy on board, he's hoping to bring his season full circle as well, and close things out the same way he started.
"I feel like the team’s kept a good mindset throughout the whole process, but certainly as we close out these last four races, it’s incredibly important to seize those opportunities if we’re able, and we have the potential to do it."
Reddick and the No. 45 team are certainly hoping they'll be able to crack a can or two in victory lane on Sunday. Live coverage of the Freeway Insurance 500 is set to be provided by USA Network from the four-turn, 1.022-mile (1.645-kilometer) Phoenix oval beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET.
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