Tyler Reddick pulled off what nobody thought he could: he beat Shane van Gisbergen in a road course race at Circuit of the Americas (COTA).
Oh, and he did that after winning back-to-back races to start the season at two superspeedways in Daytona International Speedway and EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta Motor Speedway), making him the first driver in the 78-year history of the NASCAR Cup Series to win three consecutive races to open up a season.
With NASCAR's new points system, he finds himself 70 points ahead of teammate Bubba Wallace in second place in the point standings, and Wallace doesn't even have a single finish above eighth. In fact, third place Chase Elliott doesn't have a top three finish, and fourth place Ryan Blaney doesn't even have a top seven finish.
Bottom line, it's been all Reddick through three races. Yet he's only the seventh favorite to win the 2026 championship at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Tyler Reddick disrespect has become silly
On one hand, we get it. We're three races into the season. We haven't yet raced on a "normal" oval yet this year.
But seventh is utterly laughable, especially after he only started the year eighth.
Reddick is listed at +850, implying he only has a 1-in-9.5 chance of winning the championship and placing him behind Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson (+550), Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin (+600), Hendrick Motorsports' William Byron (+600), Team Penske's Blaney (+650), Joe Gibbs Racing's Christopher Bell (+700), and Hendrick Motorsports' Elliott (+800).
Let's be real. Had any one of those six drivers had opened up the season with three straight victories, they would be the runaway championship favorite, even after just three races. Heck, Larson would probably have negative odds by now, given his recent history and the ongoing narrative that he's supposedly the best NASCAR driver ever.
Of those drivers, only Hamlin, Blaney, and Bell won more than three races all of last year. Larson hasn't won since May 2025, Elliott has three wins since October 2022, and Byron has three since April 2024.
Reddick just notched three in 15 days, and despite only leading the final lap of the Daytona 500, he has led more total laps than anybody else this year.
It's not like this is Reddick's first time contending, either. He is no "pretender". He is sitting at 11 career victories, and he's earned those wins on 10 different race tracks, with COTA being the only repeat. He won the regular season championship in 2024, and he made it to his first Championship 4 later in the year.
He's also spent far less time with a top-tier team, if you are even ready to consider 23XI Racing that, than any of these other drivers, although we will give the sportsbooks the benefit of the doubt in that no team other than Joe Gibbs Racing, Team Penske, or Hendrick Motorsports has won the title since 2017.
But again, seventh favorite?
And most importantly, the 2026 season marks the first season of NASCAR's new Chase playoff format. Season-long points matter again, and winning the regular season championship guarantees that a driver will open up the 10-race postseason with a 25-point lead in the standings.
There is no more "win and in", no more "playoff points", and no more four-round, knockout format with constant points resets. What Reddick is doing now, even in February and March, has a direct impact on the postseason from a points perspective, something that wasn't always true during the 12 years of the Championship 4 format.
It's a long season. But you would think that back-to-back-to-back wins to open up the year would at least vault him into the top six.
The Straight Talk Wireless 500 is set to be shown live on Fox Sports 1 from Phoenix Raceway beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET this Sunday, March 8. Can Reddick make it four for four and make Phoenix his 11th winning track? Start a free trial of FuboTV now and catch all of the action!