Sunday’s (Sept. 21) NASCAR Cup Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway turned into a tale of teammates. Team Penske drivers Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano dominated the afternoon, and pseudo-teammate Josh Berry gave Blaney all he could handle in the closing laps. Denny Hamlin got in a mid-race tiff with Ty Gibbs, dumping his teammate on lap 110 after some rough racing. Hendrick Motorsports placed all three of its remaining playoff drivers in the top 10 after a rocky start to the postseason.
However, the team that had the worst day across the board was 23XI Racing. The organization’s two playoff drivers, Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace, both had lousy days in Loudon. Reddick had top-10 speed early in the race, but things went awry during a pit stop on lap 256 when Reddick tried to enter his pit box as Kyle Larson was exiting his. The No. 45 team had to delay their pit stop, and Reddick had to restart the race deep in the field. He ultimately finished 21st.
Wallace described his afternoon as “the longest day I’ve had in a racecar in a long time.” The No. 23 team never looked competitive, and Wallace reported several times that the car was not handling well. He ended the race one lap down in 26th.
Both drivers are at the bottom of the playoff grid and will need two good races to avoid elimination. Reddick is 11th, 23 points below the cut line. Wallace is in 12th, four points behind Reddick.
“It looks like our whole team struggled just to find the speed and the feel that we needed,” Wallace said. “I said before this is a tricky place, but to be that far off, it kind of caught all of us by surprise.”
Reddick also acknowledged post-race that he did not have the car he needed to contend for the win.
“As the day went on, it just seemed like the car got further and further away,” Reddick said. “Head-scratching for sure. Based on how the day started, I thought we were going to run inside the top 10 pretty straight up. But yeah, as the day went on, we just continued to slide backwards, and we finished 21st.”
In the post-race interviews with both Reddick and Wallace, NBC’s pit reporters were quick to mention that Kansas Speedway is up next, and that bodes well for the 23XI drivers due to their history of success there. Wallace has indeed won at Kansas before, taking the No. 45 car to victory lane in the fall 2022 race. One year later, Reddick lined up fifth on an overtime restart, made a daring three-wide pass for the lead with the white flag in sight, and sped away to victory. Throw in Kurt Busch’s win at Kansas in the spring of 2022, and the track accounts for three of the team’s nine total wins.
However, Wallace and Reddick just as quickly noted that 23XI has not been good at Kansas in their most recent visits, and they are correct. Wallace earned a top five in the spring Kansas race in 2023, but his four most recent results there are 33rd, 17th, 17th and 32nd. Additionally, the only one of those races where Wallace earned any stage points was the fall 2023 event, where a promising run was dashed by an accident on lap 108. The No. 23 team’s success this season has hinged on the ability to accumulate stage points, and they will need to do that to have a productive day at Kansas. Yet given his recent history, Wallace earning stage points at Kansas is far from a guarantee.
Reddick has not fared any better than Wallace. His last three Kansas races resulted in finishes of 17th, 25th and 20th. The No. 45 team has had an awkward season in the sense that Reddick has been a top-10 points driver all year, but there are very few races where it looked like he had winning speed. Reddick’s best finishes of 2025 are still the Daytona 500, where he came up short to William Byron on the last lap, and the Southern 500 a few weeks ago, where he could not catch Chase Briscoe. With only 156 laps led on the entire season, Reddick needs race-winning speed to get back into the game, and he has not had that at Kansas since 2023.
The 23XI drivers may be better positioned for success at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL. Wallace’s average finish there with 23XI is a solid 11.5, and he has scored stage points in his last two trips to the ROVAL. Reddick has been even better, finishing sixth and 11th in his two starts with 23XI and boasting a career average finish at the ROVAL of 7.8. Last year’s race was notable for Reddick because he made a late charge through the field and scooped up just enough points to leapfrog Logano in the playoff standings. The Reddick/Logano battle became a moot point after Alex Bowman’s disqualification, but it showed that the No. 45 team had the tenacity to stay in the playoff fight after they were backed into a tight spot. They may need more of that tenacity in two weeks.
23XI’s rough day at New Hampshire is only the latest chapter in what has been a turbulent season behind the scenes. The team’s ongoing lawsuit against NASCAR cost them their charters (at least for now). Reddick has struggled to get back to victory lane, and rookie Riley Herbst, the team’s third driver, is languishing 35th in points without a single top-10 finish. Wallace’s Brickyard 400 win is the obvious bright spot, and it will remain so if he and Reddick are eliminated in the Round of 12.
As Wallace mentioned in his post-race comments, the team needs to get its mojo back at Kansas. Recovering some of the points lost at New Hampshire would put him and Reddick in a much better position before they arrive at the ROVAL. But with their competition heating up, the turnaround must happen quickly. Otherwise, New Hampshire may go down as the race that ended 23XI’s title hopes in 2025.
Bryan began writing for Frontstretch in 2016. He has penned Up to Speed for the past eight years. A lifelong student of auto racing, Bryan is a published author and automotive historian. He is a native of Columbus, Ohio and currently resides in Southern Kentucky.