Tyler Reddick and Sheldon Creed won electric races this past weekend, in an exciting race weekend at EchoPark Speedway.
Reddick won the Autotrader 400 at EchoPark Speedway on Sunday again in dramatic fashion and won the opening race of the season, the Daytona 500. This makes Reddick the sixth driver in Cup Series history to win the first two races of a given season.
He joins Marvin Panch in 1957, Bob Welborn in 1959, David Pearson in 1976, Jeff Gordon in 1997 and Matt Kenseth in 2009.
Only one of the five other drivers became champion the year they achieved the feat, Gordon in 1997.
Tyler Reddick, a professional NASCAR driver. He is a two-time champion in the Xfinity Series. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Kenseth in 2009 finished No. 14 in the standings after missing the cutoff for “The Chase.”
Pearson finished ninth in the standings in 1976 but only raced in 22 out of the 30 races, winning 10 of them that season.
Welborn finished No. 17 in the 1959 standings, winning three races while only participating in 29 out of the 44 races.
Finally, Panch finished second in 1957 after achieving six wins in 42 races.
The odds to win a championship aren’t fully on Reddick’s side, but it is good to note that Welborn and Pearson did not run a full season’s worth of races which contributed to them finishing well below the champion in the standings.
The good thing for Reddick is that the 23XI Racing Toyota he drives has elite speed. His teammate, Bubba Wallace, was in the front for almost the entire second half of the race and was leading with two laps to go before a block on Spire Motorsports Chevrolet driver Carson Hocevar was unsuccessful. That led to Reddick surging forward following a push by Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver Chase Briscoe for the win.
After 15 second place finishes, Sheldon Creed won the Bennett Transportation and Logistics 250 on Saturday for his first win in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.
The win was a long time coming for the 28-year-old from Alpine, California. Creed’s 15 second place finishes is the most all-time without a win in the O’Reilly Series.
Creed has been a staple in the O’Reilly Series since 2022, racing for juggernauts Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet in 2022 and 2023 and Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota in 2024.
2024 was particularly tough for Creed as he finished second six times that year.
In 2025, Creed joined Haas Factory Team and drove well for them, finishing No. 9 in the standings.
The 15 second place streak wasn’t supposed to come to an end this week though. On the final lap at Echo Park Speedway, Creed sat third with Ross Chastain and Austin Hill fighting for the lead. Chastain then gets into the back of Hill, spinning Hill and killing his momentum in the process.
With two corners to go, Creed inherited the lead and won it with Parker Retzlaff coming way behind in second.
The weekend was very exciting for both series and this weekend will be the showdown of all showdowns as Connor Zilisch and Shane Van Gisbergen fight it out at the Circuit of the Americas in both the Cup Series and O’Reilly Series.
The Trucks Series will also be racing this weekend at St. Petersburg in an IndyCar double header.