Season in review: Tyler Reddick, No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota
Crew Chief: Billy Scott
Final 2023 Ranking: 6th
Key stats: Two wins, 10 top fives, 16 top 10s, two pole positions, 470 laps led

How 2023 ended: The 27-year-old Californian made the longest championship run of his career, advancing to the Round of 8. The driver of the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota answered his early season victory on the Circuit of The Americas road course with a first-round playoff victory at the Kansas Speedway 1.5-miler. He earned three top-10 finishes in the 10-race playoff run, highlighted with a runner-up at the Darlington Raceway opener and the Kansas win in consecutive races. Even with top 10s in the third round’s first two races, a tough day (26th) at the Martinsville Speedway Round of 8 finale essentially kept him from his first Championship 4 appearance.

Best race: Reddick’s first victory with the 23XI Racing team came in a dominant run at the Austin road course. He led a race-best 41 of the 75 laps at COTA and passed William Byron with 12 laps remaining to hold on to an impressively sizable 1.411-second win over two-time series champion Kyle Busch. Reddick led the race six times to claim his third career NASCAR Cup Series road course win.

Other season highlights: Reddick equaled his previous season’s high marks in top fives (10) and top 10s (16), but this is the first time he’s hit career-best totals in the same season. Reddick won multiple pole positions (at Richmond Raceway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course), giving him three consecutive years with at least one pole position and the second straight season with multiple pole positions. A streak of three consecutive top-10 efforts during the meat of the playoffs (Charlotte, Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway) was impressive.

Stat to Know: Reddick’s three road course victories in the last two years make him the winningest driver in that brand of competition during the Next Gen era. In 2022, Reddick won at Road America and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. In 2023, he added COTA to that list.

Quotable: “I still race as hard as I always have, but it’s been nice to have the cars as good as they are to where I can think twice about taking a risky choice or making a risky decision on a restart or battling for position. It’s been nice to have that knowing that if we can’t get them this lap, maybe in five laps, or maybe the next restart, or maybe the end of the race. It gives me options as a driver. I feel like for a long time in the Cup Series, I had to race really, really hard for every spot, even if it’s on Lap 5. And I still have the drive to do that, but it’s nice knowing we have a car that’s capable of overcoming track position. … It makes me feel good that if things don’t go right at some point in the race, I know what to do to get back to the front too.” — Reddick on driving for 23XI Racing.

Looking ahead: Reddick continually made progress in his maiden season with the 23XI Racing team and there’s a lot of reasons to believe even better days are ahead. Reddick had an impressive year with top-10 finishes (16), and his sixth-place finish in the championship is a career best by far — exceeding his 13th-place finish in the points in 2021. Unfortunately for Reddick, he also suffered through streaks of uncharacteristically disappointing race outcomes. His June-July, for example, included five straight summertime races where his best finish was 27th (at Atlanta). Importantly, Reddick’s teammate Bubba Wallace also made the playoffs, so the three-year-old organization took a significant step forward and proved it legitimately belongs in the “championship contender” conversation.