Although the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season featured no shortage of surprises on and off the racetrack, one driver stood above the rest as a pleasant surprise.
That driver was Tyler Reddick, who had finished no better than sixth in the standings prior to this year and ranked better than 14th just once in four previous seasons as a full-time competitor in NASCAR’s top division.
A two-time NASCAR Xfinity Series champion, Reddick was already no stranger to success in the upper echelons of the sport. Still, he ascended to new heights in 2024 by reaching the Cup Series’ Championship 4 for the first time and becoming a consistent frontrunner for the 23XI Racing organization co-owned by NBA legend Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin.
Winning On Different Types of Tracks In 2024
In his second season as driver of the organization’s No. 45 Toyota, Reddick earned career highs in laps led (597), top-fives (12), top-10s (21) and points finish (fourth). He also matched his career-high wins (three) and number of poles (three) from 2022 — his third and final Cup Series season with Richard Childress Racing.
Making Reddick’s 2024 rise all the more impressive was the fact that he recorded only four DNFs and managed to win on three distinctly different types of tracks: a mile-and-a-half track (Homestead-Miami Speedway), a two-mile track (Michigan) and a superspeedway (Talladega).
Reddick’s win at Homestead, which came in the Round of 8, clinched his first berth in the Championship 4 and came by way of a dramatic last-lap pass for the victory in the final corner where he battled team owner Hamlin and Ryan Blaney for all the glory.
“This is pretty big,” Reddick, who’s posted all eight of his premier series triumphs over the last three seasons, said during his post-race news conference at Homestead. “To do it that way, at a place like this, when everything was on the line like it was, it’s pretty incredible.”
Reddick, who finished sixth in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway and came home last among the four championship finalists, may have fallen short of his ultimate goal of winning the championship. Still, the Corning, California native turned a lot of heads along the way.
Reddick Talks About Winning The Regular-Season Title
One of his biggest achievements was being awarded the regular-season title, which he secured by a single point with a 10th-place finish in the regular-season finale at Darlington Raceway where he completed all 500 miles despite battling a stomach virus that threatened his ability to go the distance.
“It was good year for us,” said Reddick, whose 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace was shut out of Victory Lane. “We won in the right moments and were just hoping for a little bit more of that magic [in the final race], and it wasn’t meant to be.”
Unlike in 2024, Reddick — who celebrates his 29th birthday in early January — will start 2025 on many prognosticators’ shortlist of favorites to be crowned champion of NASCAR’s premier division at season’s end.
If Reddick can close the deal on a title in 2025, he’ll not only deliver the first championship for Jordan and Hamlin’s Toyota organization but be the driver who breaks Team Penske’s current three-year stranglehold on NASCAR’s biggest prize.
