Tyler Reddick and 23XI Racing reached new heights in the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season with three wins, a regular season championship and a Championship 4 appearance at season’s end.
The career year didn’t end with a championship, but it was a breakout season that showed Reddick and 23XI would be a force for years to come.
Reddick’s 2025 season, however, has been a different story. All the gains he and the No. 45 team made in 2024 are gone, and it wasn’t until the final race of the regular season that Reddick clinched a playoff spot on points. With 31 Cup races in the books, Reddick currently sits with zero wins, six top fives, 11 top 10s and just 156 laps led in 2025. All those totals would be Reddick’s worst marks since his early years with Richard Childress Racing, and he is at risk of going winless for the first time since 2021.
Throw in a 29-point deficit to the playoff cut line for Sunday’s (Oct. 5) elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, and Reddick has a steep hill to climb this weekend in order to save his season.
Is his 2025 season one that will end with at least one win? Or will he be shut out of the winner’s circle for the first time in four years?
Reddick Has a Lucky Ace Up His Sleeve
Reddick has put together some impressive races this season, even if those races are less frequent than they were last year. Look no further than the playoff-opening Southern 500, where Reddick finished runner-up and was only bested by Chase Briscoe and a No. 19 car that led more than 300 laps.
Reddick still has winning chances this season, but with five races to go, time is starting to run out. If he’s going to end the 2025 season with a win, we first need to rule out the places where it won’t happen.
Martinsville Speedway? Not in a million years. He has an average finish north of 20th in 11 starts, and he hasn’t led a single lap at the 0.526-mile oval. Talladega Superspeedway? He won there in April of last year, but Toyota is easily the weakest manufacturer on superspeedways, and lightning typically doesn’t strike twice. The season finale at Phoenix Raceway? Not unless he makes the Championship 4, which would most likely require a win to even reach that point.
The Charlotte ROVAL has been a great track for Reddick historically, as he has a best finish of second and has finished no worse than 12th in five starts. Reddick also has three road course wins to his name, but with Shane van Gisbergen vying for five straight Cup wins on the left-and-right turns, it’s hard to see anyone dethroning SVG in his season of utter dominance.
That leaves the Round of 8 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and I’m calling my shot: Reddick will pick up the win in Sin City.
Kansas Speedway isn’t identical to Las Vegas, but last weekend’s race showed that Toyota currently has the speed advantage on 1.5-mile tracks. Reddick has come close to wins at Vegas in the past, including a runner-up finish in 2024 spring race. In that race, he had the best long-run car, but he ran out of laps to pick off Kyle Larson for the lead and win. He was running top five at Vegas last fall until he was sent flipping through the infield grass, and he led 34 laps at Vegas this spring and had an average running position inside the top 10, even if his eventual finish of 25th didn’t show for it.
Whether he’s in or out of the playoffs in one week’s time, elite drivers always capitalize on the opportunities presented to them, and I expect Reddick and the No. 45 team to pull off a win in the best opportunity they have left. – Stephen Stumpf
Better Luck Next Year
I hate to be the negative Nancy here, but it’s not looking good for Reddick to win this year.
Reddick hasn’t had much good luck this year, and the closest he’s come to winning was at Darlington Raceway in August, where he finished second. He also hasn’t led many laps this season, with the most he’s led in a single race (42) again coming at Darlington, though this time in April.
Obviously, he wants to win, but he seems to be more distracted this year. 23XI as a whole is down in its performance, with Bubba Wallace scoring the organization’s lone victory at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
23XI is also racing as open cars, so perhaps that, as well as the lawsuit against NASCAR, is taking away part of his focus.
Or it could be that the addition of a third full-time car, driven by Riley Herbst, is limiting the number of resources toward Reddick’s and Wallace’s teams.
Regardless of the reason, there’s still a chance Reddick could move on to the next round of the playoffs, which should give him a greater incentive to win. He’s been great at the Charlotte ROVAL, winning the opening stage in each of the last two races there. He’s never won the ROVAL (yet) but has a few top 10s, including a runner-up in 2021.
Could he win at one of the other tracks? Well, of the four left, he’s only had one victory, and that was at Talladega. Reddick brought home the win there last spring after starting 18th. But we know how unpredictable that 2.66-mile track can be. One wrong move can spark the Big One. The likelihood of Reddick finding victory lane there isn’t very high.
Las Vegas seems to be one of his better chances to win, as he was second there in March 2024. However, Reddick’s finished outside the top 20 in the past two Vegas races.
And uh, how about we just gloss right over Martinsville? Why? Well, you saw how poorly 23XI ran at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, another flat track. Martinsville hasn’t been much better for the California native. Reddick only has two top 10s in 11 races there, with his last one in the spring 2024 event. His average finish is an atrocious 20th.
Lastly, we have the season finale at Phoenix, and that place is a flat track, just like Martinsville. However, Reddick was able to score a sixth-place finish at Phoenix in the 2024 season finale.
It’s not likely that Reddick will take the checkered flag in the final five races of the year, unless he can pull off the upset at Charlotte this weekend. Yes, several drivers have won in the past after they’ve been eliminated from the playoffs, but based on his history at the remaining tracks, we could easily see a Cup season without a win from the two-time NASCAR Xfinity Series champ. – Joy Tomlinson
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf
Joy joined Frontstretch in 2019 as a NASCAR DraftKings writer, expanding to news and iRacing coverage in 2020. She's currently an assistant editor and involved with photos, social media and news editing. A California native, Joy was raised watching motorsports and started watching NASCAR extensively in 2001. She earned her B.A. degree in Liberal Studies at California State University Bakersfield in 2010.