Remember when Tyler Reddick had the best start to a season in NASCAR Cup Series history?
With a Daytona 500 triumph and wins at EchoPark Speedway and Circuit of the Americas, he stood alone as the first driver to open a season with three straight wins. That hot streak continued into the spring, and he became the first driver since Dale Earnhardt in 1987 to win five of the first nine. After Memorial Day weekend’s Coca-Cola 600, Reddick had a 122-point lead and an average finish of 5.5.
So much success, and yet all of it feels like a lifetime ago with the No. 45 team in the midst of one the worst midseason collapses of the modern era.
In the nine races since the start of June, Reddick has six finishes of 25th or worse and four finishes of 35th or worse. He ranks 23rd in points scored during this stretch, and his average finish this summer is a horrific 24.2.
Denny Hamlin, who took the points lead from Reddick at the end of June, has outscored him by 242 points in the last 10 races (425 to 183). In less than three months, Reddick went from leading Hamlin by 122 to trailing him by 120.
And just when it couldn’t get any worse, it somehow got worse last Sunday (Aug. 10) at Iowa Speedway. After starting fifth, Reddick got loose underneath Erik Jones in turn 1 and sent them hard into the outside wall with a mistake that ended both their days after a grand total of three laps.
Reddick dropped from second to fourth in points at the conclusion of the race, losing spots to Iowa winner Ty Gibbs and third-place finisher Ryan Blaney.
Somehow, someway, the dream season turned into a night terror. And Reddick’s historic start makes this horrible stretch all the more shocking.
Most of the stretch has been unfortunate luck. The first bad finish came at Michigan International Speedway, where Reddick was running third and led 33 of the first 83 laps until he got collected in a restart crash. He was poised for a top-two finish at Naval Base Coronado, only to suffer a flat tire with two to go and plummet to 25th.
A mechanical problem at Sonoma Raceway relegated him to last, and a freak incident at Chicagoland Speedway where a piece of debris punctured the No. 45’s oil cooler left him toward the bottom of the order once again. Two weeks later, Reddick finished 30th at North Wilkesboro Speedway after getting collected in a crash when Alex Bowman attempted a late entry to pit road. When looking at all those incidents, Reddick’s crash at Iowa is the lone bad finish that was truly self inflicted.
It’s been a miserable couple of months for the No. 45 camp, without a doubt. But how much of this really matters?
If the full-season points format returned for 2026, this summer stretch would’ve been a championship ender. He would’ve squandered a near two-race lead and would find himself nearly two full races back.
But this is no full season points system. Instead, for better or for worse, this catastrophic stretch is an insignificant dent will quickly be forgotten with a reset.
The only consequence that Reddick will receive points wise is a lower Chase seed. The top seed will start the final 10 races with 2,100 points; second begins with 2,075, while third receives 2,070 and fourth gets 2,065. Barring a miracle, Reddick will enter the reset between second and fourth in points and will enter the Chase 25-35 points behind the top seed that was once easily within his reach. Compared to the 242 points he’s lost to the points leader in the last 10 races, that 25â35-point setback is nothing.
The points penalty won’t be severe, but there is a mental aspect to all this, however. It’d be easy for anyone on the No. 45 team to feel completely demoralized with this string of results, but the team can’t get psyched out by this when Reddick is still a heavy title favorite. It’ll also take time for the team to return to the heights it reached at the start of the season once more, and there’s only three races left until the “real season” begins. Clearly, the team won’t be at 100% strength by the time the Southern 500 arrives.
The Chase won’t magically fix their woes, but with all that said, the points reset will give Reddick and co. a get-out-of-jail-free card that they wouldn’t receive in a season-long format. And Reddick’s summer collapse, which would the story in a reality where all 36 races were weighted equally, will simply be reduced to a minor footnote in the road to a championship.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is âStat Sheet,â 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