Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing had an amazing start to the season and ended up with seven wins before the regular season ended. Corey Heim won at San Diego and Indianapolis after Tyler Reddick dominated the early season, picking up five wins in the first nine races. And yet, with three races done in the Chase, Reddick’s chance of winning 23XI’s first Cup title is getting slimmer with each passing race.
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While Toyota has been dominant all season long with Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI, Ford and Chevrolet have fought their way back, and former Cup champ Kevin Harvick has made a blunt verdict about Reddick’s championship dreams.
“I think that it’s definitely everything that’s changed has mixed things up in a different aspect,” said Harvick on his Happy Hours podcast. “And I think Tyler Reddick, you know, they’ve just been off. And, you know, I don’t think right now they have a chance to win the championship.”
Harvick’s prediction came after he analyzed how the 2026 season has shaped up with NASCAR making multiple package changes right through the year.
“We’ve talked that the performance wasn’t as good as Joe Gibbs in that particular team,” said Harvick. “And I think that when all the stuff changed around with whatever NASCAR was inspecting and doing and whatever was happening, it seems like it’s affected them a lot.”
Reddick, in the No.45 23XI Toyota, went on a hot run to start the season with consecutive wins at Daytona, Atlanta, and COTA, before adding wins at Darlington and Kansas. Reddick had a sizable lead at the start of the season before his team owner, Denny Hamlin, cut it down and took the championship lead for the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team.
Up until NASCAR raced at Michigan International Speedway, Tyler Reddick finished every single race within the top 15 and picked up handy points in every race, even when it wasn’t a top-ten finish.
At Michigan, Reddick was caught up in the nine-car wreck caused by Carson Hocevar tapping John Hunter Nemechek’s bumper, and the 23XI driver picked up his first DNF of the season. Before Michigan, Reddick’s worst finish was 15th at Martinsville. And the 23XI No. 45 driver made quick work, bouncing back with a 2nd-place finish at Pocono, right after Michigan.
But then Reddick’s season turned completely. 25th in San Diego, 36th in Sonoma and Chicagoland. That was a bad streak for Reddick, who would then finish in the top-ten again at Atlanta. Yet again, he couldn’t keep it up and showed a string of ups and downs over the next few races.
30th at North Wilkesboro, 10th at the Brickyard, a DNF at Iowa, and 11th at Richmond before he found his form again.
Reddick entered the Chase as the 3rd-seeded driver on the back of back-to-back top-ten finishes at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Daytona. He topped that up with a 3rd-place finish at Darlington to get his Chase off to a decent start, but that’s where the run of form ended.
25th at Gateway and 18th in Bristol see Reddick down in 7th now with a 61-point gap to championship leader Kyle Larson.
Luck on track, mechanical issues, and a health problem that Reddick confirmed last month, that all played their part in how Jordan’s star driver’s season has shaped up. Reddick revealed that he had been having symptoms of sleep apnea and only started to work on it recently. While he didn’t say it was directly related to his performance, the lack of proper rest led to fatigue, which could have impacted his performance at times.
At the start of the season, Reddick looked like the man to beat, and it looked like even the JGR cars struggled to keep up with Reddick’s 23XI Toyota, but that picture has flipped completely now.
There are currently three JGR drivers who are higher ranked than Reddick: Denny Hamlin in 2nd, Christopher Bell who is 4th, and Ty Gibbs in 5th.
Although Harvick was ready to dismiss Reddick as someone still contending for the title, the Chase is heading to three races at intermediate tracks, tracks where Toyota has shown to be the most dominant.
Kansas, Las Vegas, and Charlotte. Reddick’s last win came during NASCAR’s last visit to Kansas. In Vegas, he finished 13th, and during the rain-curtailed race in Charlotte, he finished 3rd.
If Reddick is to remain in the hunt for the title, the next three races are ones where he needs strong finishes and a possible win in one of the three. Joey Logano’s rise to third after three races in the Chase is reason enough to believe that Reddick and 23XI are still in it. But their performance in the next three races will decide whether he is a genuine contender or not.