Tyler Reddick ascended to become one of the NASCAR Cup Series’ best in 2024, winning the regular season championship and earning a spot in the Championship 4. The 2025 season was less fruitful for the 23XI Racing driver, who failed to win a race throughout the 36-race campaign.

Reddick came into the 2026 season with a sizeable amount of pressure on him, with 2026 serving as a contract year. Any doubt of his ability was erased on the final lap of Sunday’s Daytona 500, in which Reddick stormed past Chase Elliott to take the checkered flag. Reddick is and will forever be known as a Daytona 500 champion. As for what it means in totality for the 30-year-old, Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic encapsulated it all on “The Teardown” after the race.

“What this means for Tyler Reddick is this is a young, talented driver who’s been kind of bubbling if you will just kind of that level of very, very good to great, you know? This is also a driver I think we forget who won the regular season championship in 2024, and we talk about how we believe Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports are gonna dominate and this system is tailor-made for them — we do need to tip our cap to 23XI,” Bianchi said. “Over 24 races, they did win that regular season championship [and] that matters.

“So, yes, we think those other two teams are gonna dominate but let’s not completely dismiss 23XI. Reddick is a very, very talented driver; he has won a road course, he’s won on short ovals, he’s won on big ovals, like, he has won on intermediate tracks. This is a talented driver who if he has the right team around him, is going to have great success.”

Tyler Reddick recaps ‘surreal’ feeling of winning Daytona 500

Reddick took a step back in 2025, though there might have been a reason for it. On a professional level, 23XI was involved in a heated legal battle with NASCAR. On a personal level, Reddick’s son, Rookie, underwent a series of medical procedures.

It was a lot to deal with for both Reddick and 23XI. But on Sunday, in the Great American Race, Reddick had every reason to smile in Victory Lane.

“Last year was really hard for all of us, hard for me,” Reddick told Jamie Little of FOX Sports. “When you’re a Cup driver and get to this level and you drive for Michael Jordan, it’s expected you win every year and for us to go on that drought we did, it made us really look hard in the mirror. … Worked really hard in the offseason and there were many points in this race where we weren’t making decisions we wanted to, but we just reset and every opportunity we got to reset, we went back at it.

“I’m just speechless. I didn’t know if I’d ever win this race. It’s surreal. Honestly, the best part is before the race, my son asked me, ‘Are you ever gonna win this race?’ Something about today felt right.”