He’s come back to earth, but points advantage keeping a smile on Reddick’s face

Tyler Reddick is ready for the spotlight to swing back onto his 23XI Racing team.

Reddick started the season as the belle of the ball with three consecutive victories, which made history in the NASCAR Cup Series. It meant continuous attention and media obligations each week as the winning streak stretched out.

But in the last two weeks, Reddick has quietly slipped back into the field. He finished eighth at Phoenix Raceway, the week the streak ended, and was 13th last weekend in Las Vegas. The latter being the first time the team finished outside the top 10, and the last two weeks being the first races Reddick didn’t lead at least one lap.

“I wouldn’t say it’s nice because I’d rather win and just deal with it,” said Reddick on Saturday at Darlington Raceway about things being back to normal for his team without all the attention. “But when you look at how much we missed it in Las Vegas, for us to still score the points that we did was good. If we’re going to have bad days that’s the kind of bad days we need to have.

“It’s not like we were terrible at Phoenix, but we were kind of blah at Phoenix, too. So, if we’re going to run bad and still keep it in the top 10 and stuff that’s what we need to do.”

Reddick is the only driver who has scored more than 200 points through the first five races of the season. With his 255 points, he sits 61 ahead of teammate Bubba Wallace, with 194. The duo leads the series with four top-10 finishes in five races.

“I’ve never really had a season start off like this and obviously, with mine specifically (winning the first three races), it hasn’t happened,” Reddick said. “Typically, I’m on the other side of the fence on this stuff and start the season off a little behind, trying to catch up. The year that really comes to mind is obviously 2024; it took until about summer to finally close in and get ahead of (Kyle) Larson.”

After the first two races of the 2024 season, Reddick was 24th in the championship standings. He had climbed to fifth place in the standings after the 10th race. Reddick would take the point lead for the first time after Michigan International Speedway (race No. 24) and went on to beat Larson for the regular-season championship by one point.

Now in the era of the Chase, having the points lead means more. And it has drivers like Reddick keeping a closer eye on the standings each weekend.

“I wouldn’t say I’m taking it for granted, but I appreciate how hard it is to have this kind of a start to the year,” he said. “We would love to keep the gap and expand it if possible. But we have to run a little better if we’re going to do that.”

The stretch that Reddick went on late in 2024 had him lead the points for five consecutive weeks. Should he leave Darlington Raceway with the point lead, Reddick will have led the points for a career-high six consecutive weeks.

“Yeah, it’s pretty good,” he said with a smile. “I’d say we’re pretty safe and in good shape to be able to do that as long as I don’t monumentally screw up tomorrow. But that’s not the goal, right? The goal is that we come here and contend, we lead laps, and we always find a way to run in the top five.

“If we can do that on a bad day, like we’ve been able to do on some of our more off days here, that would still be a really good day.”

Reddick has never won at Darlington. In 13 previous starts, he has seven top-10 finishes and enters the weekend off two consecutive top-five finishes at the track.