Tyler Reddick would certainly have preferred a stronger finish to his 2025 NASCAR Cup season, but the circumstances gave him some grace. His younger son, Rookie, battled serious heart problems and spent considerable time in the Intensive Care Unit, and Reddick carried that worry through every lap. Even with his mind split between the racetrack and the hospital, he still finished the year in P9 despite going winless. He understood that his team worked around the clock to prepare his car for competitive Sundays, and he felt compelled to match their commitment as best he could.
Advertisement
Reddick, who finished 9th this year with seven top-fives, had confronted this balance long before 2025. Back in 2022, the 23XI Racing driver acknowledged that although he wanted more time to enjoy his personal life, the sheer amount of effort poured into his program demanded tough choices. Sometimes those sacrifices meant losing time with his son, Beau, who was his only child at the time.
The 2021 season had taught him that the Cup level requires a deeper trade-off than he expected, forcing him to give up more family time than he had anticipated. Everything shifted once NASCAR returned to a more traditional rhythm in 2021. The time he savored the year prior evaporated.
Reddick explained, “I’d love to not do any of those things and spend all the time I could in the world with my son, but that’s not really fair to my team,” recognizing the reality his crew lived with every day.
“I have a lot of great men and women on my team that have kids, have family that they’d want to be spending time with as well. But, quite literally, they’ve got to clock in at seven in the morning and clock out no sooner than four. So I try and do as much as I can, try and get home as soon as I can, but yeah, it really does take away from the amount of time that I can spend with them.”
Reddick‘s rookie year in 2020, shaped by the global shutdown triggered by COVID-19, offered a rare good side. With the world halted, he spent two or three months at home, doing very little outside of what everyone else was doing, staying in place. That stretch allowed him extended time with his son and with his then-girlfriend, now wife, Alexa.
That tug-of-war between fatherhood and racing became one of the hardest parts of his routine. The challenge pushed him to guard the moments he did have at home. The limited time with Beau needed to be undistracted, intentional, and fully lived, because that was the only way he could make peace with the sacrifices demanded by the sport.
Now, with the break before the 2026 season begins, Reddick can focus fully on his family again. Rookie’s health appears to be improving, and Reddick can be there beside him, Alexa, and Beau as they navigate this difficult time together as a family.
