NASCAR insiders react to impressive 23XI Darlington showing between Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace

The Round of 16 of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs is all about survive and advance. The 23XI Racing duo of Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace took a step forward in doing that during Sunday’s Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.

Both Reddick and Wallace qualified well and spent the entire night running inside the top 10. Reddick finished runner-up to Chase Briscoe, while Wallace finished sixth. Jeff Gluck of The Athletic didn’t have Wallace advancing to the Round of 12. Reddick, meanwhile, remains winless on the season. They sit 5th and 4th in the playoff standings, respectively, heading into this Sunday’s race at Gateway.

“I had Bubba Wallace out in Round 1. I was mostly concerned about Gateway because he’s never really had a good run there, but they looked great tonight — really great,” Gluck said on The Teardown podcast. “Both the playoff cars had speed and then Reddick — just for him contending for the win — it looked like he was going to have a shot at Briscoe there. I think he entered as the No. 14 seed, and he has now jumped 10 spots up to No. 4 in the standings. In terms of the guys who haven’t won their way in yet, he’s the third-best guy right behind Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson. Suddenly, he turned things around for himself really quickly, leaped over the regular season champion [William Byron] by 10 points.

“That was a really huge night for him, for sure. Obviously, he really wants to win, but I think he did really well for himself. The Tyler Reddick of old might have tried to force the issue there and make a mistake, got in the wall and do too much. He gave it a great effort on that last corner to try to do a hail mary that was in the realm of reason where he could still save it. That was a key moment there where he didn’t do anything to shoot himself in the foot. That was the knock against him early in his career.”

23XI drivers Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace had impressive showing at Darlington

While Briscoe was the dominant car throughout the night, Reddick started catching him in the last 20 laps of the race. Rather than force the issue and risk hurting himself, Reddick played it smart. While he gave Briscoe a run for his money, he never stepped over that line of aggressiveness, Jordan Bianchi said.

“That would have been interesting if he was more on offense if this was an elimination race or something like that, it would have been interesting to see how he handled this. He was smart; I’m gonna put as much pressure on him [Briscoe] as I can, but also not go to a line and do too much where it’s going to cost me,” Bianchi said.

“It was smart; he just raced really heady tonight, didn’t take chances and put himself in a position to get a second-place finish. Again, just survive and advance in this round is what this round is all about because this is the round where guys always take a shotgun to their foot and that’s exactly what happened tonight.”