Tyler Reddick, driver of the number 45 23XI Racing Toyota, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2026

Tyler Reddick: A Daytona 500 Win and a Start to 2026 No NASCAR Driver Had Ever Made

August 20, 2026

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Driver Spotlight - where we pull one Cup Series driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the number 45.

The Short Version

Tyler Reddick is a two-time Xfinity Series champion, the 2024 Cup regular-season champion, and the driver who put Michael Jordan's 23XI Racing in Daytona 500 victory lane for the first time. He started 2026 by winning the first three races of the year, something no driver in the history of the Cup Series had ever done. He came up on dirt, he wins on road courses and superspeedways alike, and at 30 years old he is still chasing the one thing missing from the shelf.

From Outlaw Karts to the Cup Series

Tyler George Reddick was born January 11, 1996, in Corning, California, and grew up most of his life in DuQuoin and Peoria, Illinois. He was in a race car at four years old, running Outlaw Karts, and he never really stopped. Mini sprints, midgets, dirt late models, sprint cars. He collected "youngest ever" records the way other kids collected trading cards. Youngest driver to qualify on the pole for the World 100 at Eldora. Youngest winner in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. Youngest driver ever to qualify for a World of Outlaws sprint car feature.

That dirt background is the key to how he drives. He runs the car loose and uses the throttle to steer it, and he is comfortable when the rear end is moving around underneath him. It is the same reason a lot of NASCAR's best have come off the clay. He moved into the Truck Series in 2013, got his first national-series win at Daytona in 2015, then went to the Xfinity Series and announced himself for real.

Back-to-Back Titles and the Closest Finish Ever

Reddick won the 2018 Xfinity Series championship driving for JR Motorsports. Then he switched to Richard Childress Racing and won it again in 2019. Back-to-back national titles is hard enough. Doing it with two different organizations is proof the driver was the difference.

His 2018 season also gave NASCAR one of its all-time record-book entries. In the season opener at Daytona, Reddick beat Elliott Sadler to the line by 0.0004 seconds. That is the closest finish in NASCAR history, and it still is.

The number 45 Monster Energy Toyota Camry driven by Tyler Reddick for 23XI Racing — The number 45 Monster Energy Toyota that Reddick has driven for 23XI Racing since 2023. (Photo: Missvain, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Signature Moments

Reddick reached the Cup Series full time in 2020 with Richard Childress Racing in the number 8 Chevrolet. The wins did not come right away. It took until 2022, at Road America, for him to finally break through. He added the Indianapolis road course and Texas that same year, then left for 23XI Racing and the number 45 Toyota in 2023.

The move worked. He won at COTA and Kansas in 2023, then had his best full season in 2024 with wins at Talladega, Michigan and Homestead. That year he also won the regular-season championship by a single point over Kyle Larson and finished a career-best fourth in the final standings.

Then 2025 happened. No wins in 36 races. A 38-race drought stretched into the offseason and the questions got loud.

He answered them on February 15, 2026. In the 68th running of the Daytona 500, Reddick led exactly one lap, the last one, getting a shove from teammate Riley Herbst and driving past Chase Elliott in the final 500 yards while the field wrecked behind him. He beat Ricky Stenhouse Jr. by 0.308 seconds. It was the first Daytona 500 win for 23XI Racing and the first for Toyota since 2020.

IT'S TYLER'S TIME! @TylerReddick wins the 68th running of the #DAYTONA500!
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) February 15, 2026

Then he won at Atlanta the next week. Then COTA the week after that. No driver in the history of the Cup Series had ever won the first three races of a season. He added Darlington and Kansas to make it five wins in the first nine races, which no one had done since Dale Earnhardt in 1987.

By the Numbers

Here is the career so far, laid out in the parts that matter. Every number below is a Cup Series career figure through Richmond in August 2026.

Career figures are Cup Series totals through Richmond, August 2026. Original Happy Hour Racing graphic.

Where the 2026 Season Stands

The first half of 2026 was the best stretch of Reddick's career. He led the points through the first 17 races and at one point had Denny Hamlin by 129 markers. Since then it has gone the other way. A lap-four crash at Iowa on August 9 left him 36th, and that was his fifth finish of 30th or worse in a nine-race span. After Richmond on August 15 he sits fourth in points, 138 back of Hamlin, with two regular-season races left.

None of that changes the important part. He has five wins and the playoff points that come with them, which is what matters once the postseason starts. In April he signed a multiyear extension to stay in the 45 car.

Off the Track

Reddick is married to Alexa DeLeon, and the couple has two sons. The first one, Beau, got his name because Reddick won a bet tied to the 2019 Xfinity title run. Their second son arrived in 2025 and had a serious health scare that put the family through a hard year off the track. He came through it. Reddick has been open about how much that stretch reshaped his season and his priorities.

He is also the grandson of Benny Brown, who founded the Nashville record label BBR Music Group, so the family business was music long before it was racing. In 2016, years before he ever won a Cup race, Truck Series fans voted him Most Popular Driver.

The Bottom Line

Tyler Reddick already owns a Daytona 500, two Xfinity titles, a regular-season championship, and a NASCAR record nobody had touched in 78 years of Cup racing. The only trophy left is the big one in November, and after the start he had in 2026, that is a real conversation and not a hopeful one.