NASCAR insider breaks down massive Tyler Reddick turnaround, winning first three races after COTA

Tyler Reddick, fresh off winning the NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship in 2024, went winless in 2025. It was stunning to see Reddick, one of the best all-around racers in the sport, go a full 36 races without getting to Victory Lane.

Reddick came into 2026 in a contract year with 23XI Racing, needing to perform. He’s responded by winning the first three races of the season, becoming the first driver in NASCAR history to do so. Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic has been amazed by Reddick’s turnaround, especially given the racetracks Reddick has done it at.

“Huge turnaround,” Bianchi said on The Teardown. “There’s so much to unpack from today, and I know people are gonna look at this and go, ‘oh, this wasn’t maybe the most exciting race,’ but there was a lot of bigger picture stuff to come from this, and I think you opened it by saying this is the NASCAR record when someone wins three races in-a-row for the first time. Think about what we talked about so much over the offseason; you go Daytona, Atlanta, COTA. Two superspeedways and a road course, three wildy challenging tracks for different reasons.

“We kind of expected Daytona to be typical Daytona and you’re gonna get a different winner in Atlanta. Yet, here we are, the same driver won those races. Like, what would those odds have been going into the year? I don’t know, I would have loved to have known. If this would have happened at Phoenix, Las Vegas, Darlington, you’re like, ‘Yeah, you know, a Hendrick driver or a Gibbs driver, maybe a Tyler, they hit on it, they’re on their game, we’ve seen it, OK.’ But to have this stretch of races, to win three in-a-row, the circumstances and everything is really incredible.”

Tyler Reddick is the driver to beat in NASCAR

Sunday at COTA was Reddick’s best performance to date. He started on the pole and outperformed Shane van Gisbergen, who came into Sunday’s race looking to tie Jeff Gordon for the Cup record of most consecutive wins on a road course (six). Reddick stopped him and decided to make some history of his own instead.

The 23XI Racing driver didn’t just beat van Gisbergen; he left no doubt, beating him to the start-finish line by more than three seconds. Reddick has been chasing van Gisbergen at road courses for the last two seasons. Sunday, it was van Gisbergen who was chasing him.

“Yeah, just trying to remember everything that I knew was going to be important there at the end and just tried to minimize the mistakes,” Reddick said on the FOX broadcast after the race. “Shane is just, that’s what he’s so good at. He does not make mistakes.

“I certainly made a couple and just doing everything I could to just manage the gap and just stay away from him, you know what I mean? If I let him get close enough, it was going to be hard to hold him off.”

Reddick will head to Phoenix Raceway this Sunday with a 70-point lead in the standings. Reddick has just four top 10s in 12 starts at Phoenix.