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Tyler Reddick had a Pinnacle Financial Partners sponsorship before Pinnacle had anything to do with 23XI Racing. That relationship goes back to 2018, years before Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin’s team existed and years before the Nashville-based bank ever showed up on a Cup Series hood. That history is worth knowing, because on August 14, 23XI Racing announced that Pinnacle isn’t just sticking around — it’s expanding. The bank has signed a multi-year renewal that adds more Cup Series races with Reddick and the No. 45 team starting in 2027, and its black-and-blue branding stays on both the car and Reddick’s driver uniform.
An Associate Deal That’s Growing Up
Pinnacle became a 23XI associate partner in 2023, which in NASCAR terms means its paint scheme shows up for a handful of races rather than bankrolling the full 36-race Cup Series slate the way a primary sponsor does. The livery debuted at Nashville Superspeedway in 2024, and this weekend’s race at Richmond will mark the sixth time the Pinnacle-branded No. 45 Toyota has hit the track. Moving from a handful of select races to “additional races” in 2027, without committing to a full season, is the standard middle step for a regional brand still deciding how much of its marketing budget belongs in NASCAR. It keeps Pinnacle’s spend controlled while giving 23XI something increasingly valuable: multi-year revenue it can actually plan around, at a moment when the team is fielding four drivers out of a shop that didn’t exist three years ago.
23XI team president Steve Lauletta framed the renewal around that kind of long-term thinking, describing it as built on “creating unique activations that are elevating both brands.”
The Win That Made the Business Case Easy
Reddick’s strongest argument for a bigger commitment wrote itself earlier this season. At EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta, he took heavy damage and still fought back to win — the first victory in the Pinnacle-branded car, and the second leg of three consecutive wins to open his 2026 season. For a bank whose entire pitch is stability and trust, a wrecked car clawing back to victory lane is the kind of unscripted marketing moment no agency could plan. It’s also the practical reason associate deals turn into bigger ones: the car has to actually perform, not just look good in the paint scheme.
Beyond the Track: An Entertainment Playbook
The Pinnacle relationship extends well past race weekends. The partnership produced a collaboration with the Academy of Country Music, putting an ACM Awards scheme on Reddick’s car for NASCAR All-Star Race weekend at Dover Motor Speedway. That crossover carried into the awards show itself, where 23XI developmental driver Corey Heim, not yet a full-time Cup racer, represented the team alongside country artist Kameron Marlow at an ACM fan event. Using a developing driver for lifestyle activations rather than a locked-in Cup Series regular is a deliberate choice: it protects Reddick’s and Wallace’s schedules for actual racing while giving Heim reps in front of sponsors and cameras ahead of an eventual full-time promotion.
For Pinnacle, NASCAR is clearly just one lane in a much wider sports-and-entertainment strategy that already includes golfer Russell Henley, the PGA Tour’s Cadillac Championship, the Memphis Grizzlies, the Tennessee Titans, and its own branded live-music venue in Nashville.
Why a Regional Bank Is Spending Like This Right Now
The timing lines up with something bigger happening at Pinnacle itself. The company combined with Synovus Financial in 2026, creating a $129.1 billion-asset bank that is now the largest bank headquartered in Tennessee and the largest bank holding company headquartered in Georgia, with a footprint spanning nine states. Fusing two banks’ customer bases and brand identities across that many markets is slow and expensive. A sponsorship with a built-in track record, a driver relationship dating to 2018 now producing wins on national television, is a far faster way to keep a newly combined customer base engaged than building brand awareness from a standing start. It is the same logic behind other NASCAR sponsors leaning on storytelling over simple logo placement.
What It Means for 23XI Going Forward
23XI has grown from a single Bubba Wallace entry at the 2021 Daytona 500 into a four-driver operation fielding Wallace, Reddick, Riley Herbst, and developmental driver Heim out of Airspeed, the team’s Huntersville, N.C. facility that opened in January 2024. Reddick’s own resume backs up the investment: he won the 2024 regular-season championship and reached the Championship 4 for the first time in both his and the team’s history. Locking in sponsor commitments through 2027 gives 23XI predictable funding to keep expanding a roster and a shop that have both grown quickly in a short amount of time.
Watch for the black-and-blue No. 45 this weekend at Richmond, running under NASCAR’s revamped short-track rulebook, for its sixth outing in Pinnacle colors, and a preview of a partnership that is only getting bigger from here.
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