Darlington, S.C. — A faulty alternator, questionable brakes, and a late-race run-in with Chris Buescher. None of the afforementioned obstacles could stop Tyler Reddick from doing what he has done so often in 2026, as he scored the win in the Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway.
The driver of the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota Camry XSE had one of the best cars in the field at the 1.366-mile speedway, but constant issues kept forcing him to recover. However, a pit strategy call by his crew chief, Billy Scott, on the final stop of the day allowed Reddick to have an advantage of four-lap fresher tires.
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On a scorching day, where lap times fell off three-plus seconds per lap as tires wore down, that made all the difference as Reddick was able to cruise by all challengers, including Brad Keselowski, who swept the opening two Stages of the race, to take a decisive win by nearly six seconds.
Reddick, who won the second race of the season at Atlanta without a right front fender, says he’s learned to always believe he can come back.
“I know never to give up,” Reddick said. “I think it’s very fitting that when we finally get our first win here at Darlington that the lady in black would test us like that. We’ve been so close so many times. I mean, lap one we had the charging problem where the battery wasn’t charging at all.”
With temperatures in South Carolina pushing past 90 degrees on Sunday, Reddick was baking inside of a sweltering car without the use of driver comfort features like a cooling suit, or a helmet blower fan, as he was trying to manage dwindling voltage.
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“All day long just not running fans. Sweat my tail off inside the race car, and we knew it was going to be physical,” Reddick explained. “Yeah, I don’t know. Really wore out, but I guess I don’t need as much of that cooling stuff as I normally have.”
This victory marks the fourth win of the season for Reddick, and it came in just the sixth event of the campaign.
Michael Jordan, NBA legend and co-owner of the 23XI Racing team, spent the final laps of the race watching things unfold while sitting on the pit road wall at Darlington Raceway. After seeing his driver overcome the issues he endured during the race, he was biting his nails hoping nothing else would crop up to end the dream finish.
“I wanted everything to be good. Once he gets back out there, I feel like his competitive juices are going to carry him all the way to the end. Those are the longest 18 to 20 laps that I can even imagine. I just didn’t want to see a caution. The caution would have changed everything,” Jordan said in a post-race interview on FS1. “But he did the job. He earned it all week, and I’m real proud of the team.”
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Keselowski, who led a race-high 142 laps, and looked for a while like he would score his first win of the year, would hold on to finish second. And sure, from the outside, you’d expect a runner-up finish to be a heartbreaking result after a dominant day, but Keselowski knew he was beat by the best car in the field in the closing laps of the race.
“We didn’t have the best car today. Not compared to Tyler. Tyler drove a hell of a race, and he’s driving a rocket, and he’s making it count right now,” said Keselowski, who gave Reddick his first NASCAR National Series shot in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series years ago.
Keselowski was also able to find solace in the fact that he collected a lot of points on Sunday, which continued his great start to the season.
“I think we got the most out of the day we were getting to get, honest, but we scored a lot of stage points, second place, first place loser, but that’s okay. We’re doing the things we need to do and making the most of the days we have,” Keselowski stated.
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A runner-up finish for a driver still recovering from a broken femur, suffered in the offseason, is a pretty impressive effort.
Ryan Blaney overcame bad pit stops all race long, and was able to rally in the closing laps to finish third.
“Yeah, solid car all day. I thought we had good speed. Especially long run speed. Yeah, just stuff we got to work on, pit road,” a dejected Blaney said. “Hopefully, we’ll get better at that, address the issues that we got, and go forward. But that’s really all we can do. Really proud of the 12 guys for bringing me a good car and getting it better all day and kind of adjusting to where we were in the pack.”
Carson Hocevar, who had to start at the rear of the field due to unapproved adjustments after tagging the outside wall in qualifying, was able to claw his way through the field to record a fourth-place finish in a throwback paint scheme honoring Dale Earnhardt’s 1981 race car.
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Austin Cindric would score a much-needed fifth-place finish, nd in doing so made Team Penske the only organization to place two cars inside the top-five of the final finishing order. While Blaney and Cindric had great cars, three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, Joey Logano, struggled mightily all race long on his way to a 33rd-place finish.
Ty Gibbs, Daniel Suarez, William Byron, Chris Buescher, and Erik Jones rounded out the top-10 finishers in Sunday’s race.
With his win, Reddick extended his NASCAR Cup Series point lead to a 95-point advantage over Blaney. Bubba Wallace, who entered the day second in points, suffered from a crash not of his doing and finished 34th. As a result, Wallace dropped to third in the standings, and now sits 120 points behind Reddick.
Logano, who had a miserable day, dropped to 16th in the championship standings, and is the final driver inside the 16-driver Chase Grid after Darlington.
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Michael McDowell, who has the same point total as Logano, is the first driver outside the cutline, while AJ Allmendinger (-15 points), and Zane Smith (-16) are the next drivers down the list in the point standings.
There are 20 races remaining until the 10-race Chase for the Cup begins.
Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, March 29. That race will be televised on FS1, and coverage of the event will kick off at 3:30 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network (MRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcasts of the race at Martinsville.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as Reddick Stays Hot, Takes 4th Cup Series Win In First Six Races.
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