Tyler Reddick and 23XI on a ‘dream run’ to start NASCAR season

This isn’t supposed to happen anymore.

With the introduction of the NextGen car in 2022, a single-source supplied spec car, the conviction was that no one would be able to dominate modern Cup Series campaigns the way Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson or Kyle Larson had back in the day.

Parity!

There have been just six races, of course, but Tyler Reddick, Billy Scott and the 23XI Racing No. 45 team have won four of them and haven’t even put a full race together in their collective minds.

There are caveats aplenty:

The first win was on a superspeedway in the Daytona 500, the second win was on a superintermediate at Atlanta and the third win was on a road course at Circuit of the Americas but now the fourth comes at super-unique Darlington Raceway.

Is this really a caveat or a sign that they have actually become well-rounded championship threats in advance of the Chase for the Championship?

“I mean, some of it is you look at the places we’ve won, in my opinion, where we’ve been very strong at (Atlanta); we won there,” Reddick said. “COTA has been a track over the years that I’ve been very, very strong at, so we won there. Then in Darlington, you know, 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 or even Charlotte or some of these other places where I can get it going.

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

Okay, sure, but how many more of these tracks does he have?

“I was sad to see the ROVAL go but now we have two Charlotte oval dates, so that’s awesome,” Reddick said. “We’re going back to Chicagoland, and last time I was really strong in an O’Reilly Auto Parts car. There’s a lot of tracks on the schedule that we have been really, really strong at, and you got to see that in 2024 with how we were able to put races together.

“If we can keep this up, who knows? I’m just going to take it one week at a time.”

What was most impressive about this particular victory is that it took overcoming a degree of adversity. One lap into the race, Reddick bottomed out and killed his alternator that forced him to run the rest of the race without any cooling mechanism.

He also needed to come through the field during the second stage.

“We kind of got to that difficult point in stage three where we either take it safe and come back down and change the battery again, but give up all our track position, or we stay and basically cut every last thing off that I had running to keep me cool,” Reddick said.

“So, the final 100 laps were brutally hot. When Billy asked me if I was willing to stay and keep everything off, I was all-in because I really, really wanted to win here. With the car as good as we had today, I was willing to take that risk, you know? I just fought through the heat, fought through those things to win the race.”

They have been rewarded with a 95-point championship lead over Ryan Blaney, basically a race and a half advantage, important given the 25-point head start the regular season champion will earn come the Chase for the Championship.

“That’s badass,” Reddick said with a chuckle.

It’s also the kind of dream start that team owners Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan could only conceive in their wildest imaginations.

“I mean, it was a dream, but it’s hard,” Hamlin said. “Even legacy teams dream of starts like this. For a start-up team (when you) think about it, it’s probably a little pie in the sky, but it all comes together.

“I mean, eventually you just keep putting really good people together, and you’re going to have these type of results. Again, I think this was the most impressive weekend I’ve seen from 23XI, because everyone came in here with so many unknowns, and they figured out the Rubik’s Cube before everyone else.”

Hamlin says the only remaining weakness for the organization is short tracks, and that’s exactly what awaits them next weekend at Martinsville Speedway.

“If I can win there, oh, my gosh, the world is going to end,” Reddick said walking out the door.