Turning Point: Has 23XI Racing rejoined the elite? Will Michigan be a wild card?

Here’s what’s happening in NASCAR with the Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway in the rearview and the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway (Sun., 2 p.m. ET, Prime Video) up next.

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1. Did 23XI Racing just get its swagger back at Nashville?

After an abysmal month of May, the Toyota-backed organization’s veterans looked like the title hopefuls they entered the season as, with a strong showing in Tennessee. A sign of things to come, perhaps?

23XI Racing didn‘t just stop the bleeding this past Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway; it sent a message.

No, neither of the team‘s two playoff contenders walked out of the Tennessee track with the trophy. But after a May that saw both Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace mired in an all-you-can-do-is-laugh degree of bad luck and inconsistency, the team‘s veterans delivered the kind of poised, top-10 performances that reminded everyone why the duo entered 2025 as championship contenders and looked the part early on.

Reddick and Wallace each touted top-10 speed throughout the event, according to NASCAR Insights, with both corralling much-needed top-10 results to match and Reddick nearly nabbing the win in Stage 1, snapping a five-race streak where he‘d finished 14th or worse in the process. Wallace, who‘d suffered three consecutive DNFs, rebounded from an early pit-road speeding penalty to finish sixth, his best result since March. Wallace, despite ranking among the top six in stage points through 14 races, has struggled to close strong, with an average finish just barely inside the top 20 (19.7).

Neither landed in the top five, and they combined to lead just seven laps and failed to even win the race … so why was this a statement? Well, only twice in 2025 has 23XI placed multiple cars in the top 10 — this was the first time it‘d happened since Homestead — and it happened on the heels of one of the worst months in team history.

Combine Nashville‘s turnaround on the results sheet with the raw speed the data indicated, along with the resilience each showed in clawing their way back to the top 10? There‘s something here.

Wallace‘s post-race comments reflected both relief and renewed confidence, too.

“We had (expletive) luck the last month, so I‘m glad May is over with,” he said. “I have the utmost confidence in this team to continue getting finishes like this on a consistent basis, not the bouncing back and forth that everybody is used to out of the No. 23.”

That sounds like stability to me.

Reddick, meanwhile, has kept his focus on execution over results — something team co-owner Denny Hamlin also stressed over the weekend — and it‘s a mindset that could be showing early signs of paying off, perhaps in the long term.

Lest we forget — this is an organization that upgraded to a three-car stable in the offseason, with a handful of races even fielding a fourth. Wallace is also still just 14 races into a relationship with new crew chief Charles Denike, and these things just, more often than not, take some time to stabilize. They’re getting there.

And as the series heads to Michigan, the timing couldn‘t be better. Reddick returns as the defending winner, while Wallace (a past Michigan Truck Series winner) has proven speed at the 2-mile oval, with a Cup Series runner-up finish in 2022. Both drivers are comfortably above the playoff elimination line (though Wallace was likely starting to sweat a bit before Nashville), but a strong Michigan run would further cement the ‘Music City‘ success as the point where it all turned around.

With the 23XI’s recent slump, some were starting to question the legitimacy of the team‘s 2025 title hopes, having made its maiden voyage in the Championship 4 with Reddick a season ago. The team proved, however, that it can still deliver elite performances under pressure. And what wins championships?

If Nashville was the spark, Michigan could be the fire that reignites 23XI‘s contenders, if not the team as a whole. And perhaps the question isn‘t whether 23XI’s drivers are back — it‘s whether they’re here to stay.

Welcome to the gauntlet.

Playoff spots are being garbled up left and right all of a sudden, and Sunday marks the beginning of a grueling 12-race stretch to determine the 16 drivers that will compete for the Bill France Cup a handful of months from now at Phoenix Raceway.

After an entire month of nonstop intermediate tracks (which, don’t get me wrong, rocked), the final leg to the postseason is nothing but unpredictable: four road courses (one of which is new and in a different country), two drafting tracks and two short-track slugfests. Three of the four other “routine” stops? Oh, just some of the most unique race tracks NASCAR visits, in Pocono Raceway, Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Dover Motor Speedway.

The fourth? Michigan.

On paper, Sunday‘s 400-miler in the Irish Hills might look like the most straightforward race left in the regular season. History and the current season‘s wild swings suggest, however, it could be anything but.

The numbers tell a story of both steadiness and surprise. Only one of the last 12 Michigan races was won by a driver getting his first win of the season, which might suggest it‘s a bad bet for a wild-card winner. The season started with many of the same faces in Victory Lane, but now nine different drivers have won in 2025, and four of the last five races have been taken by first-time 2025 winners. On the surface, it may look like we could see one of those nine collect another Winner‘s Sticker, but dig deeper: Eight drivers have snapped winless streaks of at least 41 races at Michigan. And eight Cup drivers are riding a streak of at least 41 currently, with one very popular name sitting exactly on that number (who also happened to finish runner-up in his first three Michigan starts.)

The many Chase Elliott fans out there may have to wait another week, though — Ford has dominated the track recently, winning nine of the last 10 races. Plus, Chevrolet‘s last three Michigan wins all belong to his teammate Kyle Larson … but those all came last decade, with a team that no longer exists. Still, Elliott has been incredibly consistent this year, and it‘s only a matter of time before a race breaks favorably enough for him to win. Or he just flat dominates.

Meanwhile, Michigan has only produced two first-time Cup winners in its 107-race history: Dale Jarrett in August 1991 and Larson in August 2016. (Which, unfortunately for Carson Hocevar, likely points to the future superstar‘s potential first Cup Series win not coming at the Michigander‘s home track. Since when does that guy pay heed to norms, though?)

This season, the playoff picture is already full of surprises. Team Penske has all four associated cars tentatively locked into the playoffs, a stark contrast to 2024, when none had even won by this point. Legacy Motor Club, an afterthought in its initial years of infancy, has three top-fives in 2025 — more than its last two seasons combined — and seven top-10s, already surpassing its 2024 total. Not to mention Erik Jones, another Michigan native, is coming off his best race in recent memory.

With so many wild-card races left, Michigan could be slept on big time for any drama. And while it‘s not the most likely place for a first-time winner, it‘s at least a proven stage for breaking slumps and big moments.

Michigan may not be the most obvious wild-card race left, but sometimes it‘s the ones you don‘t see coming that leave the biggest impact.

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