Is Tyler Reddick going to steal the Regular Season Championship?

The Regular Season Championship is up for grabs all of a sudden and there’s one driver in particular who’s loving it.

When people show you who they are — believe them.

You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Whichever cliché you want to use, it’s clear — and the matching outfits don’t help his case — that The Hamburglar’s thievish ways have rubbed off on No. 45 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick, who appears well on his way to stealing the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Regular Season Championship.

With five races remaining before the 16-driver field for the 2024 NASCAR Playoffs locks in, only 20 points separate the top four drivers vying for the top regular-season honors, and only one of them has been turning in consistently strong finishes over the past two months. Reddick’s charge to third place in the overall standings, just 15 points back of Chase Elliott’s lead, looks like it could be an unstoppable train that plows through the next five races to close out the summer and ride into the playoffs with an extra trophy and a slew of bonus playoff points.

Kyle Larson has been first or second in the standings (except for one week in March) since Atlanta, but Reddick is now hot on his heels for that second spot, gaining 49 points on Elliott in the last four races alone. Both Larson and Hamlin — each a series-leading three-time winner in 2024 — continue to be fast, but their results have been sporadic, with just three top-10 finishes combined between them over the past five races.

Elliott has been slightly better, but a 13.8 average finish over the last five races likely won’t be enough to keep him in the top spot with how Reddick is running.

The Talladega spring winner has been piling on the points lately, padding his stats to now be tied for the series lead in top fives (eight) and own the most top 10s (14) outright. He’s turned in a blistering 6.9 average finish in the eight-race stretch from the Coca-Cola 600 to Pocono — and the race before that streak started, he led 174 laps from the pole at Darlington, a season-high.

It’s fair to wonder how things would’ve looked if Larson wasn’t a race shorter than everybody else, but the fact of the matter is — he missed the 600, and the window was opened for another driver to capitalize.

Right now, that appears to be Reddick, but the next five races are anything but straightforward. A return to the Indy oval for the first time in Next Gen history could mean anyone’s ballgame — not to mention that the first race coming out of the Olympic break features the first Cup points race in history with a tire option. Michigan’s blazing speeds follow, with Daytona’s wild-card race right after and then what’s sure to be a pressure-packed scene-setter for the first regular-season finale at Darlington.

It’s all shaping up to be quite the battle before we even get to the postseason, and there could be some more surprises along the way, too.