By David Morgan, Associate Editor
HAMPTON, Ga. – At the halfway point of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, Tyler Reddick still finds himself with a goose egg in the win column.
Since joining 23XI Racing at the start of the 2023 season, the driver of the No. 45 Toyota hasn’t gone this long into a season before winning a race. Each of the last two seasons, it has taken a maximum of 10 races before capturing his first checkered flag. A year ago, his first win of the season came at Race No. 10 at Talladega, and Race No. 6 at Circuit of the Americas the year prior.
In 2022, when Reddick still drove for Richard Childress Racing, Race No. 18 was the magic number, scoring his first Cup win at Road America.
Thus far into the year, it’s been close but no cigar for Reddick and 23XI as a whole. Through the first 17 races, Reddick has scored three top-five finishes and five top-10 finishes, with a runner-up result in the Daytona 500 being his best finish of the season.
Despite not yet winning a race, Reddick finds himself relatively comfortable in the points standings, holding a 107-point advantage over the cut-off line, but with only five places in the Playoffs left and nine races remaining, the chance of being left out when the checkered flag falls in Daytona is still a possibility.
“Comfortable, but not safe, not like 100% safe,” Reddick said of his feelings of his current points status heading into Saturday night’s Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway.
Only Chase Elliott at +160 is in a better points position among the drivers that have yet to win a race in 2025.
“We’re in a good spot, better spot than most,” Reddick continued. “Aside from Chase, there’s no one else as good to the cut line on points. But yeah, there’s enough races left in the season. You never wanna say we’re good before we are.
“So, I wouldn’t say that means we’re gonna be desperate or just try and score a lot of points. I just think we stay focused on what we’ve been trying to do all year long and that’s score stage points and try to put ourselves in position to win races and just keep after it.”
Of the remaining races in the regular season (Atlanta, Chicago, Sonoma, Dover, Indianapolis, Iowa, Watkins Glen, Richmond, and Daytona), Reddick has yet to score a win at any of them, but has scored top-fives and top-10s at most of those tracks in recent years.
In the summer Atlanta race a year ago, Reddick finished sixth, followed by a runner-up at Chicago and Indianapolis. He also finished eighth at Sonoma in 2024, third at Richmond, and second in this year’s Daytona 500, so the potential is there if the No. 45 team can put things together.
“We’ve got multiple cars that are in. We’ve got one car that is out, overall, you just have to shake the bad luck,” 23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin added of trying to get Reddick and the other team cars of Bubba Wallace and Riley Herbst into the Playoffs.
“You have to shake the stuff we’ve done that hasn’t helped our drivers finish races, just have to be a little bit cleaner with our days and this is the time that you have to make the push because you can’t count on that cutline not moving.”
Reddick will have some work to do when the green flag drops on Saturday night’s race, as he’ll roll off from mid-pack in 23rd place. The Quaker State 400 is scheduled for 7:00 pm ET on TNT.
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