Tyler Reddick's No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the March 2026 Pennzoil 400. Photo: Nascar9919 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Tyler Reddick went 23 races without a win. At Phoenix Raceway on Sunday he needed only 18 laps to end that drought, and the reason he got those 18 laps comes down to rubber: the two fresh tires his No. 45 crew bolted on under the final caution, and the right-side tires that quit on the people trying to win the championship.
Reddick beat pole-sitter Ryan Blaney by 0.801 seconds in the Freeway Insurance 500, the seventh of 10 races in NASCAR’s Chase. It was his sixth win of 2026, the 14th of his Cup career and his first at the 1-mile Avondale oval. He led just the final 18 of 312 laps. Every driver who led more — Christopher Bell (85), Joey Logano (84), Bubba Wallace (52) and Blaney (51) — left without the trophy.
Why two tires was the right number
The race turned on the yellow for Kyle Larson’s crash with roughly 30 laps left. The leaders split three ways. Chase Briscoe, Chase Elliott and Ty Gibbs stayed out to keep track position. Bell came in for tires. Reddick’s team took two, the classic short-run compromise at Phoenix: lose fewer spots on pit road than a four-tire stop, but carry real grip into a restart where the stay-out cars are sliding on worn rubber.
The green came back on Lap 294, leaving a 19-lap sprint, and that is exactly the window where two tires beats both alternatives. Reddick admitted his launch was poor, but a lane opened, he got Briscoe loose into Turn 3 and was gone a lap later. Briscoe, who arrived chasing a third straight win, faded to eighth on his old tires. Elliott made the stay-out play work far better, holding on for third after starting 16th, though he sits 149 points out of the lead and is effectively racing for pride.
A tire tax on the title contenders
If the winning strategy was about tires, so was the damage at the top of the standings.
Kyle Larson never had speed. He qualified 22nd, fell a lap down during a long green-flag run in Stage 2 and needed the wave-around under a Lap 157 caution to get back on the lead lap. Then the right-front tire let go entering Turn 1, 31 laps from the finish, and the No. 5 Chevrolet went straight into the wall. He was credited with 34th and three points. Crew chief Cliff Daniels said afterward the team had run its tire pressures too low — despite carrying a full pound more air than it did in last year’s Phoenix finale, where Larson also had a tire failure. “I thought we had margin in the tank there and obviously we didn’t,” Daniels said.
Denny Hamlin had the opposite problem: a car that was getting better. He was running inside the top five on Lap 221 when the right rear failed in Turns 3 and 4. He lost a lap limping to pit road, then picked up a speeding penalty that made him ineligible for the wave-around. He finished 28th, ending a record streak of 31 consecutive lead-lap finishes. Crew chief Chris Gayle said Hamlin’s pressures stayed above his minimum threshold and matched Reddick’s, and suspects debris.
They weren’t alone. Austin Dillon’s flat brought out the Lap 157 caution, Cody Ware backed into the Turn 1 wall moments after Hamlin’s failure, and John Hunter Nemechek nursed a tire problem to pit road in Stage 2.
Here’s the engineering tension. Air pressure is the cheapest setup lever a crew chief has: drop a little and the tire gives you more contact patch and a friendlier balance over a long run. The cost is heat and structural margin, and Phoenix’s heavy braking into Turn 1 loads the right front as hard as anything on the schedule. Larson’s team says it misjudged that margin even after adding air. Hamlin’s team says it didn’t, and blames something on the track. Reddick ran the same numbers as Hamlin and won. The lesson isn’t a magic psi figure — it’s that teams are working right at the edge, and on Sunday the edge picked its victims. It also landed in the same week NASCAR loosened its rules to let Cup teams swap front brakes after qualifying at Phoenix, a reminder of how much this track asks of the front corners.
23XI’s best and worst moment came under one caution
The same Larson yellow that set up Reddick wrecked his teammate’s day. Wallace had control of the final stage in the No. 23 Toyota, then was caught speeding on pit road under that caution. He finished 17th. One pit cycle gave Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing both its winner and its most painful near miss of the season.
For Reddick, the context matters. He won five of the first nine races, including the first three, then went 23 straight without a victory. His comments afterward said the team kept searching for speed through the slump, and Sunday’s practice pace backed that up. Toyota, meanwhile, now has four of the top seven in points.
Seven drivers, 56 points, three very different tracks
Larson’s three-point day turned a 49-point cushion into a five-point one. Every Chase driver gained at least 12 points on him. Official standings after Race 33 of 36:
- Kyle Larson — 2,370
- Christopher Bell — 5 behind
- Chase Briscoe — 24 behind
- Denny Hamlin — 31 behind
- Ryan Blaney — 40 behind
- Joey Logano — 44 behind
- Tyler Reddick — 56 behind
The oddity is Reddick himself. He has six wins, more than anyone in the series, and he is seventh. That’s the 2026 Chase in one line: a 10-race points fight where consistency banked earlier still outweighs a stack of trophies. Larson’s 2.8 average finish through the first six Chase races is the only reason a 34th didn’t cost him the lead. Logano is the mirror image — he swept both stages and gained 48 points, but lost track position on pit road, finished sixth and still trails by 44.
Joe Gibbs Racing is the team to watch. Bell, Briscoe and Hamlin sit second through fourth, and Bell needs to outscore Larson by only six points over three races.
Further down the order, Corey Heim finished fifth but scored no points as a driver not eligible for Cup points, and Daniel Suárez — freshly re-signed by Spire for 2027 — came home seventh.
What to watch at Talladega
The Chase moves to Talladega Superspeedway for the YellaWood 500 on Sunday, Oct. 25 (2 p.m. ET, NBC). Tire pressure won’t decide that one; the draft and the inevitable crash will. That makes it the most dangerous race left for whoever leads, and the best shot for drivers further back. Reddick needs to gain about 19 points per race on Larson. Martinsville, where Hamlin has a long record of winning, follows, and the title is settled at Homestead-Miami.
Larson said the No. 5 team has done well at superspeedways. He will need that, because Phoenix showed that a five-point lead lasts only until the next flat tire.
Full results and stage results are available from NASCAR’s official results page. Championship standings are from the official NASCAR Cup Series standings.
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