Tyler Reddick has won five of the first nine races of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, putting him in company that only Dale Earnhardt in 1987 has kept in the modern era.

And as the wins have piled up for the 23XI Racing driver, so too have the whispers, that something more than skill and strategy explains a run this historic. Dale Earnhardt Jr. has heard enough.

The suit, filed by 23XI and co-plaintiff Front Row Motorsports, resulted in a settlement earlier this year, and some fans have been connecting that outcome to the team’s extraordinary start to the season. Earnhardt was direct in his dismissal.

“There’s a lot of people that think that there’s some sort of conspiracy just because the guy won a lot of races,” Earnhardt said. “That’s not happening. There’s no way in hell.”

He went further, laying out the practical reality of what such a conspiracy would actually require to function. “There’s no way in hell that NASCAR would risk the integrity of the entire sport,” he said.

“There would be so many people that would be in on this. I’m talking about people that are just making a base salary. You think that guy gives a damn, and he’s the one keeping the secret? Some people out there really think so.”

Earnhardt added, “They’re not going to races and dominating.

“They’re running top five, and when something goes down at the end, he’s the kind of guy that’s going to get up on the wheel and make something pretty impressive happen.”

That profile fits Reddick’s 2026 perfectly. He won the Daytona 500 after threading through a final-lap pileup and receiving a decisive push from teammate Riley Herbst past Chase Elliott. He followed it up at Atlanta by charging back from significant crash damage.

He swept aside the field at Austin to become the first driver in NASCAR history to win the opening three races of a season. At Darlington, he recovered from a battery failure that sent him to the back of the pack, turned off his cool suit to manage the power drain, and still won by six seconds.

And at Kansas, after a late caution triggered overtime, he surged past Kyle Larson on the final lap to claim his fifth win.