When the NASCAR Cup Series left Kansas Speedway in April, 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick was the points leader by a country mile after having just notched his fifth win in the 2026 season's first nine races.
Given how the record for wins in a single season with the Next Gen car (2022 to present) is six, there were already those who believed that Reddick's 2026 season could end up being one of the greatest in all of NASCAR history.
Things have certainly changed.
Skip ahead to September. Reddick still leads the series in wins, but he still has just five on the year. Instead of leaving Kansas with the points lead this past weekend, he leaves riding a 21-race win drought, and he's 111 points behind championship leader Kyle Larson.
And don't blame the Chase points reset, either. Even in the full-season standings, he'd be 183 points out of the lead, albeit behind Denny Hamlin rather than Larson.
Tyler Reddick has no real answers amid continued freefall
Reddick was the clear championship favorite after his hot start to the year, which included the first three-race win streak to start a season in Cup Series history.
At the very least, the regular season title seemed like a foregone conclusion. But many of the same issues that plagued the No. 45 team throughout their winless 2025 season have haunted them ever since, and he ended up losing a 129-point lead in the regular season standings en route to a third place finish.
It was yet another reminder that Reddick's hot start, which only actually included three wins when leading more than 10 laps, was not proof that 23XI Racing has truly climbed into NASCAR's elite quite yet.
He finished Sunday's race in 11th place, which was better than he ran throughout most of the race, but it was a far cry from where he was when he won back in April.
"It's just so crazy to be that bad," he said after dropping from 61 points behind to 111 points behind on a day he scored zero stage points.
Tyler Reddick is at a loss right now pic.twitter.com/WMc5shBPEW
— Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) September 27, 2026
While he wasn't necessarily concerned with an 18th place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway the week prior, considering the fact that short tracks have always been considered a weakness, the fact that he couldn't even crack the top 10 on a 1.5-mile oval sounded alarm bells that he currently has no real idea how to silence.
"It's just very head-scratching how we're that off."
— Taylor Kitchen (@_TaylorKitchen_) September 27, 2026
Tyler Reddick is frustrated and confused by the team's performance and lack of speed. He is 111 points behind the Chase lead. He continued that they could move on from a poor race at Bristol but not this as we are heading to… pic.twitter.com/XmW17Muaql
Even when Reddick wasn't winning early in the season, he wasn't recording disastrous finishes. In his nine non-wins in the season's first 14 races, his average finish was 8.11, and that's despite the fact that only three of those races were on 1.5-mile ovals. He didn't finish a single race lower than 15th.
Since then, he has just three top five finishes in 16 starts, and that stretch has included seven finishes of 25th or worse, even with only two DNFs.
This decline didn't just start in the playoffs. It has been going on since June, and the postseason has merely brought it to the forefront because of how much every point truly matters now versus in the regular season.
His championship chances for 2026 are all but gone, and he probably won't even come close to matching or eclipsing his career-high finish in the standings (fourth, 2024) either. At this rate, he might even struggle to remain in the top 10.
Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway are next up on the schedule, and both are 1.5-mile ovals. But given Reddick's pace at Kansas, there is little reason to believe that that 111-point deficit won't grow even larger over the next two weekends.
Live coverage of Sunday's South Point 400 is set to be provided by USA Network from Las Vegas beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET.
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