Tyler Reddick conducted a postmortem on his regular season with 23XI Racing this week, and didn’t like what he saw.

Reddick and his team examined their strengths, weaknesses, and how it all played out, after finally clinching a spot in the NASCAR Cup Series postseason on the final weekend of the regular season at Daytona International Speedway. It was achieved on points, as the team remains winless – a far cry from the wins and regular season championship the No. 45 team claimed a year ago.

“Oh yeah,” Reddick said with a smile when asked about reviewing the regular season. “We did that and got to look at a lot of numbers and a lot of things, and I don’t know if it helped. I think it adds to the frustration. Even more reason for a reset going into the playoffs.”

Despite the ups and downs, Reddick and his team were the seventh-best team at the end of the regular season. A haul of stage points, the fifth-most in the series, helped their cause. But on the other end of the spectrum, Reddick has among the fewest top-10 finishes (nine) of playoff drivers and two stage wins.

“It had the feeling, from my vantage point, that the speed wasn’t quite the same,” Reddick said of what he saw from their postmortem. “Obviously, the execution, we all know, was not great. But looking at everything that we have, the speed seems pretty good. It’s just when you look at pace and everything that we have versus our finishing position, not many in the field are worse.

“So, we’ve got to take advantage of fast Toyota Camrys and get top fives and win races. Especially here in each of these rounds.”

Reddick begins the postseason as the No. 14 seed with a mere six playoff points. He is well aware that he and his team have an uphill battle in that regard, and it leaves little room for error in a three-race round. Of those races in the first round – Darlington, St. Louis and Bristol – Reddick has never won at any of them in the Cup Series.

So, given all that has happened to this point, having seen it in black and white this week, and Reddick knowing it’s not going to be easy, how does he win the Cup Series championship?

“Pretty much don’t do what we did in the first 26 races,” he said with a laugh. “Don’t take ourselves out.

“There are plenty of things, on a more serious note, to go over and look at, and how we’ve been doing things. Everyone on the team has been looking into that and working hard, reflecting, and the word ‘reset’ has been thrown around a lot today. I feel like that’s a good way for us to look at it as well.

“Yeah, we’ve had a tough regular season. Yes, we’re behind the cutline and everything else, but the point margins are all closed up quite a bit with the playoff seeding. So, we have to go out there and do what we’ve been capable of all year, and just actually do it this time.”