A few months ago, it seemed all but a given that Tyler Reddick would be the champion of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series regular season. His points lead was 129 over Denny Hamlin after the 12th race of the year at Watkins Glen International, one race shy of halfway to the Chase for the Cup.
Only seven weeks later, Hamlin has caught, surpassed, and pulled away from Reddick by 44 points. His own three consecutive wins at Nashville Superspeedway, Michigan International Speedway, and Pocono Raceway played a major role in that, but so has a spell of disastrous luck for the driver whose 23XI Racing team Hamlin co-owns.
Reddick finished 36th at Chicagoland Speedway this past Sunday, his fourth result of 25th or worse in the five most recent races after he had not finished outside the top 15 prior to that. And it resurfaces a concern about 23XI Racing that seemed to have been extinguished earlier this season.
Tyler Reddick's No. 45 team still has clear weaknesses, and the driver can only do so much to cover them up
It should have told us a lot when Reddick was winning all of his races without having the clear dominant car in most of them. He never won a stage in any of his five victories and led the most laps only twice. Whether luck or a genuine clutch factor on his part, it was simply not sustainable.
Even more unsustainable was the fact that the No. 45 team, which could not get out of its own way from a consistency standpoint in 2025, was suddenly avoiding bad finishes at a historic level. For the entire time Reddick has been at 23XI, he's been a safe bet to fall victim to least one random parts failure per month, and his pit crew has been prone to backbreaking mistakes.
This has all come back to haunt Reddick in a major way over the past five weeks. Some of his slump has simply been bad luck, such as the accident that took him out at Michigan and the flat tire while battling for the win on Naval Base Coronado. But then there are the back-to-back mechanical issues at Sonoma Raceway and Chicagoland.
Even when Reddick was winning this year, much of it was coming in spite of his team. Lest we forget the pit road problems from which he had to fight back at Darlington Raceway, or the fact that he was running out of fuel when he was saved by a late caution at Kansas Speedway.
Reddick is a championship-level Cup Series talent, but in this new points format, he does not have a championship-level team. If he is going to have any chance in the Chase this fall, the No. 45 group may need to hope for chaos to strike the other contenders as well.
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