HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — What a difference six months has made for 23XI Racing.
The 2025 campaign was respectable: Bubba Wallace earned a crown-jewel victory in the Brickyard 400, and both he and teammate Tyler Reddick made the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs. But team president Steve Lauletta was among the many inside the shop who felt they underperformed last year, a season made more complicated by the addition of a third full-time team and off-track distractions.
The 2026 season? Couldn’t be better.
Midway through June, Reddick has led the NASCAR Cup Series points standings since winning the season-opening Daytona 500 in February, right before becoming the first driver in Cup Series history to win the opening three races of the season — and five of the first nine overall. Team co-owner Michael Jordan — arguably the most recognizable face and name in American sports history — was visible everywhere from pit road at Darlington Raceway to “CBS Mornings.” Wallace ranked inside the top three in points for five of the first six races of the season, and Riley Herbst has shown significant statistical improvement in his sophomore campaign driving the team’s No. 35 Toyota.
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“Last year was not what we wanted it to be,” Lauletta told NASCAR.com in a sit-down interview at his Airspeed office. “[…] There were off-the-track things that were needing attention. So putting all that behind us and starting out the way we started out has just been really gratifying for everybody here to know that we didn’t lose our way.”
This year marks 23XI’s sixth in competition. Just past the regular season’s midpoint, it has unquestionably been its most successful. That says a lot for an organization that had already hung plaques for nine points-paying wins before 2026, plus another for Reddick’s Regular Season Championship in 2024.
The fuel to this season’s charge, Lauletta said, largely stems from a preseason meeting in which Jordan and co-owner and racer Denny Hamlin addressed expectations for the 38 races ahead, a meeting that featured “a lot of looking in the mirror by everybody,” and challenged each team member to question what they could do to change the team’s trajectory.
“Dave Rogers, our competition director, did a really nice job of laying out five focus areas for all of us to pay attention to,” Lauletta said, “and had Michael and Denny sort of giving their thoughts on their experience of how they wanted to see those five things come to life. And everybody really bought into it. And coming out of the gates the way we did showed them that that’s the way we need to continue for the entire season and into the future.”
With success, high-profile sponsors and an even higher-profile team owner like Jordan, 23XI Racing has reaped the rewards of brand exposure that has transcended the typical NASCAR bubble. New sponsors like Hardee’s and Rockstar Energy Drink have joined the team’s stable of partners while also attracting attention from other stars from the sports world, like Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua and retired NFL running back Marshawn Lynch. The team has even been featured on Nice Kicks, an influential brand on social media focusing on sneaker culture.
“Those folks wanting to be around us because of what we were doing and are doing is great for the brand,” Lauletta said. “It’s great for our partners, right? So our partners get tremendous exposure from not only what’s happening on the track, but all the other opportunities that we are putting them in front of people in unique ways. It has helped us bring new partners onto the team that see what we’re all about and want to be part of the fact that we are making the impact that we’re making within the sport of NASCAR — which has millions and millions of fans — but also beyond that.
“It’s a tremendous benefit for us. And again, [15] races into our sixth year, we’re still growing the brand of who we are and what 23XI is going to be decades from now.”
Part of Year 6 has involved making plans for Year 7, including a multiyear contract extension for Reddick and the introduction of top prospect Corey Heim, who will replace Herbst in the No. 35 Toyota full-time in 2027 after making part-time starts as the team’s development driver since 2024.
Rookie expectations are difficult to set and even harder to live through. Herbst, a three-time winner in NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series competition, experienced that firsthand in 2025, ranking 35th in the standings, only above Cody Ware among full-time drivers. Herbst has improved to 26th in the standings so far this season, more impressively boosting his average finish five positions from 26.4 in 2025 to 21.5 this year, along with better qualifying efforts: an average of 27.0 in 2025 to 20.5 this season.
Heim, the 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion, will enter with more Cup experience than his recent rookie counterparts, Herbst and Connor Zilisch, the latter ranked 34th in points. But Lauletta is cautious to set any high bars for Heim in his first full Cup campaign.
“It’s still going to be really hard,” Lauletta said. “We know that we’ve given him the opportunity to run these Cup races. And I try to grab him after every one, and he’s usually super hard on himself. And I’ll just say to him, ‘Did you learn something?’ And he goes, ‘Yes.’ I go, ‘That’s why we’re doing this, right? We’re doing this so you learn things.’
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“He led laps for the first time a couple of races ago (at Texas). He’s made mistakes on the track. He’s made mistakes in pit lane. Did you learn something? And he’ll continue that for a number of years, and we know that that’s the case. So for me, and I think for many of us, it’s just how much can he learn over the next few years that puts him in the position that we know he could be successful.”
Adding a third team to 23XI’s fleet in 2025 proved to be “bigger than I anticipated,” Lauletta conceded, adding the people necessary to operate a successful program and incorporating them into the team’s ways. That task only grows tougher when Heim competes in a fourth entry, like he is 12 times this season. The team currently has no intentions of running a fourth car in 2027 unless a sponsorship opportunity arises that makes sense for the team, like fielding an Open entry for Travis Pastrana in the 2023 Daytona 500 or for Juan Pablo Montoya at Watkins Glen International in 2024.
“Those kind of things are interesting for a brand standpoint, a partner standpoint, but it’s not something that we’re going to focus on,” Lauletta said.
Lauletta’s resume spans decades across the sports business market, including 11 years as team president of Chip Ganassi Racing. As 23XI Racing’s brand continues to expand, Lauletta sees the rest of the sports business world paying attention to how his team is navigating the landscape, most recently highlighted by a nomination as Sports Team of the Year by the Sports Business Awards.
“I have a lot of friends at different leagues and teams and agencies, and they call and want to know what we’re up to and ask questions,” Lauletta said. “And I think we’ve been able to bring people into the team that bring different experiences and are able to open our eyes for some of us that have been around the sport for a long time of thinking and doing things differently. And that’s all good, and I think that allows the recognition we’re getting because we’re not just doing the same thing that everybody else is doing.
“I say this internally a lot: A good day for me is all the teams are piled together in a place, and we’re in a different place. And sometimes being in that different place isn’t going to be right, but I’m okay, because we’re trying something different than anybody else, and most of the time that’s going to be good. Sometimes it’s not, and thankfully, Denny and Michael give us the ability to do those things, make those choices, and learn from them, which is what has allowed us to, I think, get the recognition that we have in the short amount of time.”
Whatever lies ahead for 23XI will almost certainly remain in the space of the Cup Series. Particularly since overseeing Ganassi, which fielded cars across myriad motorsports series, Lauletta currently sees no benefit to expand 23XI to either the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series or Truck Series as the goal for owners Hamlin and Jordan was “to form a top-notch, world-class NASCAR Cup Series team.”
But what remains a focus within the walls of Airspeed is pushing the boundaries of what can be expected from a NASCAR team, transcending the sport’s own sphere and entering a more culturally relevant space.
“I think it’s continuing to drive where the brand can go,” Lauletta said. “So from an off-track perspective, delivering value to our partners, driving the brand both in the sport of NASCAR and outside of the sport of NASCAR, building a new fan base, all of the things that are going to allow us to keep the partners that we have, because we’re helping their business bring new partners on board.
“And then from an on-track perspective, I feel like we just need to continue to build fast race cars, enhance our processes that are still fairly new, attract the best talent we can attract, and give these guys a chance to compete at the highest level. And that will allow us to keep building on what Denny wanted, which is this to be a consistent race-winning team that can challenge for championships.”