Tyler Reddick stayed cool Sunday, even when he was hot under the collar.

Correction: make that hot pretty much , from the top of his helmet, throughout his firesuit and on down to his toes after the air conditioning in his firesuit failed early in Sunday’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway in the race, leaving him feeling like a sizzling Darlington hot dog, minus the bun.

Even so, Reddick drove as cool as a cucumber, leading 77 laps (just slightly under one-fourth of the 293 total laps) en route to his fourth win in six races this season.

But the lack of AC was only part of his overall problem. He also had ongoing issues throughout the entire race with the battery and alternator in his Toyota, including being forced to change the battery 50 laps in. He also had early contact with teammate Bubba Wallace and later with RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher. Fortunately for Reddick, the damage was minimal, and he was able to overcome all the adversity to top the other 36 drivers in the field.

“I know never to give up,” Reddick said. “I think it’s very fitting that when we finally get our first win here at Darlington, the Lady In Black would test us like that. We’ve been so close so many times. I mean, lap one we had the charging problem where the battery wasn’t charging at all. All day long, just not running fans. Sweat my tail off inside the race car, and we knew it was going to be physical.”

Team co-owner Michael Jordan empathized with his young driver’s battles both inside and outside his car.

“I’m pretty sure it’s frustrating for him because he had an unbelievable car,” Jordan said. “You never know what’s going to happen, especially at Darlington. I think that the key to him winning was just keeping his head.

“I think Billy (crew chief Billy Scott) did a good job of trying to keep him calm. We knew we had a fast car. We knew on a 30-lap run we were real good, on a short-lap run we were real good. We just had to get the car right. He kept his composure and did an unbelievable job.”

Reddick is off to the best start of the season and his Cup career

Reddick is off to the best start not only of his Cup career, but also of any driver in the Cup circuit, having won the first three races of the season – the Daytona 500, at Atlanta and on the Circuit of the Americas road course in Austin, Texas.

He almost won at Phoenix, only to finish eighth, and then had his worst outing of the season last week, finishing 13 at Las Vegas. No other driver has more than one win this season.

But Sunday at the so-called “Track Too Tough to Tame,” Reddick put the Lady In Black in her place, starting from the pole and then, after jousting for the lead with several other drivers, reclaimed the lead with 27 laps to go to seal the deal, finishing with an easy-looking nearly six-second lead over runner-up Brad Keselowski.

“It means everything,” Reddick said. “We have it pretty good as Cup drivers, but it seemed like today, it was going to be a blue-collar type of day – we were going to have to really work for it. From lap 1, to have the alternator problems we were having, and just be cutting fans and not to be able to run things that I was counting on to keep me cool all day was tough.”

With the 12 win of his Cup career, Reddick, Jordan, and the rest of 23XI Racing have now claimed victory in two-thirds of the first six races of the season. And had he a few extra laps at Phoenix, it’s very possible we could be talking about Reddick being a five-time winner this season.

“I never would have (thought he’d win four of the first six),” Reddick said. “Ideally, we win a couple, but to win four in the fashion we’ve won the four is pretty, pretty remarkable. Three of the four wins we’ve had to fight through some level of adversity, whether it’s issues with the car, getting caught up in an accident, or having to hold off the field basically like in COTA.

“For us to be put through these things that in my opinion kept us from winning a year ago to fight through these things and then still win is very remarkable. It’s very fulfilling. It’s the stuff that you’ve just got to kind of take a step back and say, ‘Wow, that was incredible.’

“Just really proud of my team. I kind of said at the start of the day, let’s go out there and hurt some feelings. I think we definitely did today with how we were able to drive back through the field and cap it off with a win.”

Reddick is on pace to win 24 races this season (although it’s unlikely)

While unlikely to happen, but from a mathematical standpoint, if Reddick would somehow be able to continue the pace he’s kept up thus far, he could wind up winning 24 of the season’s 36 races, and most likely wrapping things up with his first Cup championship of his career – but likely not the first and last.

Even though Reddick has made winning look easy this year, his success is more than just finishing first four times out of six. There’s also been a great deal of luck and being in the right place at the right time.

For example, in the season-opening Daytona 500, Reddick led just one lap – the final one, at that – to earn his first win in the Great American Race.

At Atlanta and COTA, he led 53 and 58 laps respectively. And then Sunday at Darlington, he led a season-high (thus far) 77 circuits around the unique egg-shaped 1.366-mile oval.

What’s more, three of Reddick’s four wins this season have come from starting on the pole. The only one that he didn’t start and finish first was Daytona, where he started 26 but roared back in the final stage to take his first win at the monstrous 2.5-mile superspeedway.

Here’s one of the oddest elements of Reddick’s success: The 30-year-old Corning, California native came into this season with a total of eight Cup career wins. In just six races thus far in 2026, he’s now increased his wins total by 50 percent over what he had coming into 2026.

Granted, there have been a number of personnel changes throughout 23XI during the offseason, both on Reddick’s team as well as on the squad of teammates Bubba Wallace and Riley Herbst. But no one has had the success that has come from the No. 45 team and its driver.

In a sense, Reddick and 23XI have become NASCAR’s version of the Little Engine That Could. They’ve literally come out of nowhere to show up the sport’s biggest teams. None of the sport’s top three teams — Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Team Penske — have had near the success that Jordan, Reddick & Co. have had this season. The only non-23XI drivers to reach victory lane thus far that are not named Reddick are Ryan Blaney (Phoenix) and Denny Hamlin (Las Vegas).

Still plenty of questions about how Reddick has accomplished what he’s done so far

While Reddick is off to the best season start of his career – with even greater accomplishments likely in the remaining 30 races – people are still asking the same questions: How? Why? And What?

Even with Sunday’s win, the answers to those questions still remain mysterious:

A) HOW: How does a driver go from zero wins in 2025 to a dominating four in just the first six races already in 2026?

B) WHY: Why haven’t the rest of the Cup teams been able to keep up with Reddick and 23XI?

C) WHAT: What has Reddick done that has suddenly made him one of the best drivers in the sport? And what is his team – and particularly crew chief Billy Scott – done this year that they didn’t do (or didn’t work) last season?

Looking at Reddick’s career stats at Darlington, it is pretty apparent he was a win waiting to happen there coming into Sunday’s race. In 14 career starts there, he now has one win and eight top-10 finishes in 14 starts there.

Brad Keselowski looked as if he and Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing had the winning package, leading a race-high 142 laps. But because he led so many laps early on, it appeared that Keselowski just didn’t have enough juice to seal the deal, while Reddick did.

Reddick leaves Darlington still with the points lead in the Cup standings, increasing from 61 points coming into the race to a 95-point edge over second-ranked Ryan Blaney.

“We continue to just be in a good spot,” Reddick said. ‘If we can keep this cushion, I feel like we’re going to be a position to maybe sacrifice a couple of points in stages to gain many more in stage two or stage three.

“I’m loving where we’re at with that, because it kind of gives us that little bit of extra confidence to maybe do something that may not pan out for us, but we’re just in a good spot there to where maybe if the situation arises, to forgo a couple of points in stage one or two to set ourselves up better for stage three.”