History has officially been made. Tyler Reddick, who started from the pole position in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series DuraMax Texas Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas on a two-race winning streak, was seeking an unprecedented third consecutive win to start the 2026 season.
After a sluggish start to the day, where Reddick dropped to eighth in the opening laps, the 23XI Racing driver was able to shake off the early hiccup and work his way back into contention, and he was good when it mattered most — the second half of the race, as he led a race-high 58 laps. But on the final restart, Reddick had a mirror full of Shane van Gisbergen, who won five consecutive road course races a season ago.
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Having arguably the best road course racer NASCAR has ever seen breathing down your neck was a pressure-packed situation for a driver looking to reach a historic mark.
“Yeah, just trying to remember everything. I knew it was going to be important there at the end, and just tried to minimize the mistakes,” Reddick admitted. “Shane is just, that’s what he’s so good at, man. He does not make mistakes. I certainly made a couple, and just doing everything I could to just manage the gap and stay away from him, if you know what I mean. If I let him get close to enough, it was probably going to be hard to hold him off.”
Reddick would be able to outduel van Gisbergen, and he would be flawless down the stretch as he stretched out the lead over the closing laps of the event. As he crossed the finish line for the final time, Reddick scored his third consecutive win to start the season.
Since the inception of the NASCAR Cup Series in 1949, this achievement had never been accomplished until Sunday at Circuit of the Americas.
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“It means the world,” Reddick said of the historic accomplishment.
Michael Jordan, the co-owner of Reddick’s 23XI Racing team was overcome with excitement after Reddick took the checkered flag.
“It’s time for change. Time for change,” Jordan said in an interview on FOX after Reddick scored the win. “And the guys feel the same thing. And Tyler came in with the most pressure. I guess everybody expected him — or he had a chance to do three in a row, and that’s the hardest one to win, you know? He kept to his strategy, and man, the guys put together a great car, man. And I think [crew chief] Bill [Scott] did an unbelievable job in calling the race, and Tyler did a good job.”
While Reddick had a slight scare for a few laps in the form of van Gisbergen, Jordan never doubted his hotshoe driver.
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“He beat some good competition. I mean, when you see SVG coming back there, you get a little nervous, but I think he had them covered pretty much the whole day,” Jordan explained.
Will Reddick ever lose again? Certainly, he will, as winning is always temporary in NASCAR, but for now, it looks like Reddick and his No. 45 team can do no wrong.
Van Gisbergen held on to a second-place finish in Sunday’s race, albeit, 3.944 seconds behind Reddick at the finish line. Christopher Bell, the defending winner of this event, finished third.
Ty Gibbs, who won the second Stage of the race but then found himself in dire straights from a track position standpoint due to the stategic decision to not pit before the end of Stage 2, was able to rally for a fourth-place finish.
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Michael McDowell, who was fastest in Saturday’s practice session and showed speed all weekend, will exit Austin, Texas, with a fifth-place result to show for his efforts.
Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, A.J. Allmendinger, and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top-10 finishers in the results for Sunday’s race.
Rookie of the Year contender Connor Zilisch could have potentially won the race, had it not been for a couple of incidents, not of his doing during the race. At the beginning of Stage 2, Zilisch received a bump from Daniel Suarez, the driver he replaced at Trackhouse Racing, which sent him spinning in Turn 1.
Zilisch would fight his way back into a top-five position as the race was nearing its end, but on the final restart on Lap 79, Zilisch would again get spun out in Turn 1 in a chain-reaction incident, where Austin Cindric and Zane Smith made contact, which sent Smith into the left rear quarterpanel of Zilisch’s car.
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Still, Zilisch would battle back to a 14th-place finish, without the assistance of a caution flag.
Alex Bowman, who has been one of the best drivers at Circuit of the Americas historically, would become ill behind the wheel of his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. After attempting to gut out a finish, Bowman finally brought his race car into the garage with just over 20 laps remaining.
Myatt Snider, a part-time NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series driver, who was on pit road working for FOX Sports, was called up to get behind the wheel. Snider would get into his firesuit, put his helmet on, and strap into the car, and would incredible finish out the laps of the race.
Without ever turning a lap in the Next Gen car, which is used in the NASCAR Cup Series, before, Snider turned some solid laps before running out of gas with two laps to go. Snider would limp the No. 48 Chevrolet back to the finish line with a 36th-place finish in the 37-car field.
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With his third consecutive win to start the season, Reddick continues to hold firmly onto the NASCAR Cup Series point lead, as he now has a 70-point advantage over Bubba Wallace, his teammate who finished 11th on Sunday.
Chase Elliott ranks third in the championship standings after COTA, as he sits 72 points behind Reddick, Ryan Blaney is 86 points back in fourth, and Joey Logano is fifth, 96 points out of the lead.
Ryan Preece is currently the final driver above the NASCAR Cup Series “Chase” cutoff, as he holds a five-point advantage over Ty Gibbs, Noah Gragson, and Ty Dillon in the standings, currently.
Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Straight Talk Wireless 500 at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, March 8. That race will be televised on FS1 with television coverage set to begin at 3:30 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the race.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as Tyler Reddick Makes History With Third Consecutive Win to Start Season.
