'It’s stuff you dream of' - Reddick's season is already one for the history books

Tyler Reddick is off to the type of start in the NASCAR Cup Series that drivers dream about – including him.

It started with becoming the first driver in history to win the first three races of the season. Then on Sunday at Darlington Raceway, the 23XI Racing driver won his fourth race in six weeks. The latter made Reddick only the third driver in history to do so, joining NASCAR Hall of Fame members Dale Earnhardt (1987) and Bill Elliott (1992).

“It’s stuff you dream of,” Reddick said. “You never know if they’re going to be reality, but just be extremely thankful that you’re able to work with the team and put together days like this where you can fight through these issues and overcome it and still win races. Just honored to be a part of the same sentence as those two guys.

“We’ll try and keep it going and see how special we can really make 2026.”

Reddick and his No. 45 team, led by crew chief Billy Scott, went winless in 2025. They finished ninth in the championship standings, considered a down year for the organization, especially after the 2024 season, when they contended for the championship and won the regular-season title.

Now the duo is blowing the narrative about parity in the Next Gen era out of the water. No driver and team has had as hot a start to the season as Reddick since the car was introduced in 2022. Instead, it has drawn comparisons to Jeff Gordon's dominance in the late 1990s or Jimmie Johnson’s in the 2000s.

“Some of it is you look at the places we’ve won, in my opinion, we’ve been very strong at EchoPark Speedway,” Reddick said. “We won there. COTA has been a track over the years that I’ve been very, very strong at. So, we won there. Then in Darlington, this is a place that of all the tracks that we go to that I’m the best at in my opinion, even more so than Homestead of even Charlotte or some of these other places where I can get it going.

“It’s just a matter of the tracks that I’m really strong at, and our cars are really strong at. This year we’ve been capitalizing on it and getting the wins.”

The four wins have been spread across a traditional superspeedway (Daytona), a superspeedway, intermediate hybrid (EchoPark), a road course (COTA) and intermediate (Darlington). Reddick had a previous win at a superspeedway, Talladega, and on road courses, including COTA. The breakthrough at Darlington was a long time coming, considering past races at the Lady in Black where he had run well, led laps, but come up empty.

A four-win season is already a career mark for Reddick in the Cup Series. He won three races in his final season with Richard Childress Racing and three in 2024, on his way to the regular-season championship and a spot in the Championship 4.

Reddick has a one-week-at-a-time approach to how far his team's success might go this season. But it’s already been more of what Reddick could have thought.

“Ideally, we win a couple,” he said. “But to win four in the fashion we’ve won the four is pretty, pretty remarkable. I know COTA was a bit of just defense and whatnot, but Atlanta, Daytona, I don’t know. You could say three of the four wins we’ve had to fight through some level of adversity, whether it’s issues with the car, getting caught up in an accident, or having to hold off the field, basically like in COTA. For us to be put through these things that, in my opinion, kept us from winning a year ago, to fight through these things and then still win is very remarkable and it’s very fulfilling.

“It’s the stuff that you just got to kind of take a step back and say, ‘Wow. That was incredible.’ I’m definitely in that place right now. Just really proud of my team. I kind of said it at the start of the day, ‘Let’s go out there and hurt some feelings.’ I think we definitely did that (Sunday) with how we were able to drive back through the field and cap it off with a win.”

In his 12 career wins, Reddick has never won on a short track. The next two races are on the short tracks of Martinsville Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway.