AUSTIN, Texas — Tyler Reddick doesn‘t declare himself to be a statistical wizard, but he understands history is on the line this Sunday at Circuit of The Americas (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
By winning the opening two races of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season in dramatic fashion — a last-lap pass in the Daytona 500 and holding off the pack at EchoPark Speedway in double overtime — Reddick became the sixth driver ever to win the first two races of a single season. No driver has ever swept the first three events.
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“It‘s kind of fitting that we come here with that opportunity to be in position for that, and it‘s going to be super important that the things we work on apply today and tomorrow,” Reddick said at the crack of dawn on Saturday during a media availability.
Only David Pearson (1976), Jeff Gordon (1997) and Matt Kenseth (2009) have won the opening two races in NASCAR‘s modern era. During the 1950s, Marvin Panch (1957) and Bob Welborn (1959) accomplished the same feat. After wins at Willow Spring Speedway — north of Los Angeles — and Concord Speedway, minutes away from NASCAR‘s current hub of Charlotte, Panch placed third at Titusville-Cocoa Speedway in Florida. That was the closest a driver has ever come to scoring wins in the opening three races. Kenseth‘s attempt went up in smoke — literally — at Lap 6, blowing an engine at Las Vegas Motor Speedway 17 years ago.
COTA is the perfect place for Reddick to get his chance, especially after the No. 45 driver won the pole for Sunday’s race. In his prior five starts at the famed road course, he is one of two drivers in the field who have never finished outside the top 10 (Alex Bowman). Reddick’s 4.6 average finish at COTA leads the league and is his personal best at any single venue.
“We‘ve been strong when you look amongst the field at road courses, but I really like coming here and coming to these other road courses and contending for wins,” Reddick added. “I guess last time we were here, we were pretty close, but from pretty much this point on for the rest of last year, it was out of sight for us.
“I like Watkins Glen — it‘s fast. Sonoma is fun, but this place, there is so much happening over the course of the lap. Whether it‘s approaches, driving styles, how the corners are shaped — you can‘t just have one approach and copy and paste it to the whole track. You have to have a different approach for the different sections and I‘ve always enjoyed that about this place.”
In his first COTA attempt with 23XI Racing in 2023, Reddick won in grand fashion. The No. 45 Toyota led a race-high 41 laps from a front-row starting spot en route to his first victory with the organization.
Since the introduction of the Next Gen car in 2022, few drivers have performed better on road courses than Reddick. Three of his 10 career Cup triumphs have come on road courses, and he is tied with Chris Buescher for 17 top-10 finishes in 23 starts. Fourteen of those have come in the last 17 races overall.
Without a doubt, though, COTA is Reddick‘s favorite road course.
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“We will have to find a way to close the gap to Shane [van Gisbergen], and Connor [Zilisch] has been very strong on the O‘Reilly Auto Parts Series side,” he added. “I wouldn‘t be shocked if both of them are up there in the front of this thing.”
Since van Gisbergen burst onto the stage with immediate success, it has challenged the Cup Series field to improve. Reddick wouldn‘t go as far as saying he has a chip on his shoulder to prove he can still excel at road courses, but he knows there is room to grow.
“I feel like I always need to show up and go as fast as I can,” he noted. “I don‘t know if it‘s necessarily to prove it to anybody else, but just go out there and run well and score a lot of points. When you look at it, [van Gisbergen has] done a good job of starting up front, having a clean race and making it hard for anyone to even challenge him. It adds to it, but it‘s not anymore so than other weekends when it‘s a race or track type that things have gotten away from us.”
Should Reddick, Bubba Wallace or Riley Herbst win on Sunday, 23XI Racing will become the third organization in Cup history to conquer the first three races of a single season (DePaolo Engineering, 1957 and Petty Enterprises, 1963).