For Tyler Reddick, Sunday marked a moment of redemption. It was not that he had spent the past two years struggling on the track, but inconsistency often left him heartbroken. He rose above that to begin the 2026 season with a bang, capturing his first Daytona 500 victory.
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In 2024, Reddick won the regular-season title, picked up three victories, and finished fourth overall. Last season was a different story. Despite several top-five runs and a near miss at Daytona, where William Byron held him off, the year weighed heavily on him, and he finished ninth. The pressure was compounded by 23XI Racing’s antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR, which left both Reddick and Bubba Wallace uncertain about their futures, knowing their rides could have disappeared overnight.
Away from the track, Reddick was dealing with even greater challenges. His younger son, Rookie, began showing signs of heart failure that initially went undetected by doctors. The family soon found themselves living in a cardiovascular ICU, anxiously waiting as specialists worked around the clock to stabilize his heart. For much of the closing stretch of the season, his son remained in intensive care with the help of an oxygen tube.
After the season ended, Reddick revealed that Rookie underwent surgery to remove a tumor near his right kidney, the root of both high blood pressure and heart failure following his birth in September.
About winning the Daytona 500 after carrying all that weight, Reddick said, “I never knew if, when I had the opportunity to race Cup, if I would win cup races, but when I did, I enjoyed it a lot.”
“I had a number of years there where I won multiple races. To have last year play out the way that it did was, it was rough. Obviously, everything else happening outside of the racetrack was not easy to manage, as well, with my son. So to get through all that, and here we go, it’s 2026, and go race, I definitely worked really hard in the off-season, but it’s tough when you don’t win,” the 23XI driver continued.
Reddick knows the bar is set high, with talk of wins and titles always in the air, and he fell short of that mark last year. He and his team had heart-to-heart talks throughout the offseason, on top of everything else swirling around them. To dig deep, clear the slate, and enter the new year with a fresh start meant the world to him.
He also knows the win came by the skin of his teeth. He led only one lap, the one that counted, at Daytona. As a result, he admitted the race was far from smooth sailing, though the final stage ultimately fell into place. It was the kind of execution they had been chasing on superspeedways since Talladega in 2024. To pull it off and stay in contention until the end was all he could ask for.
The No. 45 driver took pride in the way 23XI handled a difficult period. Within the team and across the shop, people spoke their minds and faced the situation head-on, working through the mess so the past would not bleed into the present.
They drew a line under 2025 instead of dragging it into 2026. It may have been just one race, but to start the year the way they did, on a day that tested them at every turn, Reddick believes it speaks volumes about the work put in when the season stood still.
