A week after winning the Daytona 500, Tyler Reddick still can’t seem to fully grasp that he won one of sports’ greatest races. He also recognized that he might have needed his failures from the 2025 season to help give him a boost.
In an interview with FOX Sports’ Josh Sims ahead of Sunday’s Autotrader 400, Reddick admitted that he was “so sick to my stomach” following his winless 2025 season.
“We were kinda stumped on, ‘Where do we go from here?’” Reddick said.
The winless 2025 campaign led to Reddick’s worst season in three years as he finished ninth in the Cup standings. It also brought great pressure for Reddick and his team, 23XI Racing, ahead of the 2026 season. Analysts like FOX Sports’ Kevin Harvick believed that the driver and his team needed a great year entering the season, especially with Reddick set to become a free agent soon.
But Reddick didn’t let the pressure impact his relationship with 23XI Racing. In fact, it helped him form a greater bond with the team’s owners.
What Michael Jordan’s Daytona 500 victory means for NASCAR 🏁
“First and foremost, you’ve got to look in the mirror and ask yourself, ‘What can we do so we’re never in this spot ever again?'” Reddick said about what adjustments he had to make in the offseason. “But being able to talk to Denny Hamlin and his experiences in racing, talk to someone like Michael Jordan, who is one of the greatest athletes of all-time, being able to have people like that in the room and work on things to improve them in the offseason, you can’t put a value on an asset like that.”
Reddick put his offseason adjustments to work in the Daytona 500. He didn’t lead for a single lap in the race prior to the final lap, but a thought came to him during the race’s final caution that gave him a spark to help pull ahead.
“When the caution did come out, it was kind of like a good chance for me to be like, ‘OK, I’ve got to make some adjustments,'” Reddick said. “Another thing that ran across my mind was that, ‘This might be the best opportunity you have to win the Daytona 500 in your career. You may never get back here again. So, you better take advantage of it.'”
Reddick did just that. He positioned himself in the right spot in the pack toward the leaders to avoid a pair of crashes on the final lap before driving past Chase Elliott on the final turn.
As Reddick crossed the finish line, he thought about the struggles he went through in 2025 and his family.
“It brought it to heights that I didn’t even know were possible,” Reddick said of how special the moment was to him. “To be able to lift up the Harley J. Earl Trophy with Michael Jordan, my family be there, his family be there, the whole team be there — I know I won the race. I’ve got the ring, the trophy’s right there.
“But it’s one of those things that you dream of being a reality your whole life, but here it is, it happened.”
