After winning the Daytona 500 at the start of 2026, Tyler Reddick went on to win at Atlanta and COTA before adding two more victories at Darlington and Kansas. Five wins in nine races made the 23XI Racing driver look like an overwhelming favorite to win the championship. Fast forward to today, and that confidence has almost completely vanished.
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Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr., like much of the NASCAR community, can’t quite make sense of Reddick’s downfall. On his Dale Jr. Download podcast, he sounded particularly concerned about the driver.
“What the hell’s going on with him? What in the f****** is going on with Reddick? They have had some of the strangest luck here lately. It ain’t up, it’s all down. It’s wild,” Dale Jr. said.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. did not have an easy explanation for Reddick’s recent struggles, and that’s understandable given how much his 2026 season has changed.
His last victory came in April. Since then, Reddick has managed just seven top-10 finishes in 15 races. The bigger problem has been how often things have gone wrong for him.
Reddick finished 35th at Michigan after being caught in a multi-car crash. He was 36th at Sonoma when a power-steering failure ended his afternoon. At Chicagoland, debris punctured his oil cooler and led to another disappointing finish. North Wilkesboro brought a 30th-place result after he was caught in a mid-race collision. Finally, Iowa ended with another crash and a 36th-place finish.
At one point, Reddick had a 129-point lead over Denny Hamlin at the top of the standings. Now, he’s in fourth, 138 points behind the JGR driver who has taken the #1 spot. A colossal collapse, to say the least. And surprising too, because Toyota cars have largely remained dominant. That said, the conversation surrounding Reddick was only part of Dale Jr.’s larger point.
The format can change opinions quickly. A driver can look like a championship favorite one week and become an afterthought after a bad result, and vice versa. That was where William Byron entered the discussion.
“I mean, William Byron in 12th, like, we got to talk too about the guys that are in these positions. Are they guys that can get that hot? The only person I see outside the top 10 that I think could get that hot is William. And they’re gonna really need to find something. But we’ve seen William Byron be that guy in the past that could win a couple of races and climb his way into the top five. Joey in ninth is another one. Larson. And as you move forward, you see more and more people, I think that could potentially get on a run,” Dale Jr. said.
Dale Jr.’s comments come after Kyle Petty recently questioned drivers outside the top 10. Petty argued that those in the back half of the Chase field face a tough road to the championship. Dale Jr., however, sees Byron differently. The Hendrick Motorsports driver has shown he can string together wins and quickly change the championship picture.
Dale Jr. also mentioned Joey Logano and Kyle Larson, two drivers who have already proved they can handle the pressure with their backs against the wall.
Logano is a three-time Cup Series champion, while Larson captured his first title in 2021 and followed it with another one in 2025. Both have shown repeatedly that regular-season form does not always tell the full story once the Chase begins.
That is what makes the current championship picture so difficult to predict. A driver sitting outside the top five can suddenly find the right setup, build momentum and turn the entire postseason upside down.