The feeling of winning a Daytona 500 race is incomparable. Prestige, ecstasy, bliss, and so many other words can be cited to describe a winner’s mood – something that Tyler Reddick has at the moment. The 23XI Racing driver just won the 2026 iteration of the Great American Race. But besides the prize of glory, Reddick has little to look forward to in terms of the actual hard cash prize.
A dark tax cloud over Tyler Reddick’s big win
The 68th running of the Daytona 500 had an upgrade. The purse for the 2026 event was set at a record $31,045,575, according to Racing News. That marks a scale-up from $30,331,250 in 2025. But the race winner only gets a minuscule portion of this money – 5.160% of the purse. In other words, Tyler Reddick will pocket after overcoming the carnage-riddled final lap of tonight’s race.
However, Tyler Reddick has a dark cloud hovering over his race money. That constitutes the taxes that the 23XI Racing driver will need to pay.
In terms of Federal Income Tax, Reddick will need to roll out $585,000. NASCAR drivers are independent contractors (1099 income), not W-2 employees, so the race purse is ordinary income. At this level, the driver falls into the 37% top federal marginal bracket.
Then there is a Self-Employment Tax, which amounts to $80,000. As independent contractors, drivers owe 12.4% Social Security ($21,000), 2.9% in Medicare ($46,456), and an additional 0.9% in Medicare surtax on high earners ($12,600).
Tyler Reddick can heave a sigh of relief only about the State Tax. This is because Florida, the seat of Daytona, does not impose that tax.
So in total, the No. 45 Toyota driver will need to pay $665,000 from his race winnings. Hence, Tyler Reddick will take home only $936,950, amounting to roughly 58% of the actual purse.
Nevertheless, the purse set for 2026 is the largest in the 67-year history of The Great American Race and over a $700,000 increase from last year’s figure. It is also up by more than $13 million since 2015.
And while the financial burden of taxes does dampen the 23XI Racing driver’s newfound victory, the driver does have a heavy prize to look forward to.
Leveling up after a chaotic gap
Before today, the last time Tyler Reddick visited Victory Lane was in October 2024. That was a win at Homestead-Miami Speedway, which paved his way to the Championship 4. But after that, Reddick entered a season of multiple upsets. The No. 45 team lagged behind in 2025, being unable to fetch a single race trophy. What’s more, Reddick and Co. had to rack their brains about the NASCAR lawsuit, which came close to dismantling Michael Jordan‘s Cup Series dreams.
However, the lawsuit was resolved favorably for Jordan – and 23XI Racing could resume its legendary work. And this revival of a noble pursuit counts as a big prize for Tyler Reddick.
“Last year was really hard for all of us, hard for me,” Tyler Reddick told Fox Sports’ Jamie Little after his ninth career victory. “For us to go on that drought we did made us look hard in the mirror, and really proud of everyone on our Toyota Camry. Worked really hard in the off-season, and there were many points in this race where we weren’t making decisions we wanted to, but we just reset, and every opportunity we got to reset, we went back at it.”
Despite the financial baggage, Tyler Reddick can relish the immense prestige linked to a Daytona 500 win. Let’s look forward to more of his victories this year.
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