Tyler Reddick won at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday, October 18, and ended a 23-race stretch without a NASCAR Cup Series victory. He drove the No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota to the checkered flag in the Freeway Insurance 500, 0.801 seconds ahead of Ryan Blaney. As a result, the championship fight now has six drivers within 56 points of the leader with three races left.
The win was his sixth of 2026 and his first at Phoenix. It was also the 14th Cup win of his career. Still, the numbers before Sunday told a stranger story. Reddick won five of the first nine races of the year, then went 23 starts without another trophy.
Phoenix was the seventh of 10 races in The Chase presented by Mobil 1, NASCAR’s postseason. In fact, Reddick led only 18 of the 312 laps. However, those 18 were the last ones, and they were the only laps that paid.
How Tyler Reddick won at Phoenix
The deciding moment came on a late restart. According to NASCAR’s official race recap, the field went back to green on Lap 294. Reddick then led every lap from there to the finish. The Associated Press account says he passed Chase Briscoe for the lead with 17 laps to go.
Before that, the race belonged to other cars. Christopher Bell led a race-high 85 laps, and Joey Logano led 84. Bubba Wallace, Reddick’s teammate at 23XI Racing, also led 52 laps. However, a pit-road speeding penalty under caution dropped Wallace back, and he finished 17th.
NASCAR counted six cautions for 43 laps and 21 lead changes among 10 drivers. That kind of shuffle rewards whoever has track position at the end. On Sunday, that driver was Reddick.
After the race, he poked fun at his own celebration. “That’s way too long,” Reddick said of his burnout, according to the recap. He also credited his crew, saying the team never lost its motivation during the long dry spell.
The finishing order
NASCAR’s official recap lists the top 10 as follows. Blaney finished second, Chase Elliott third and Bell fourth. Next came Corey Heim in fifth and Logano in sixth.
Daniel Suárez finished seventh, and Briscoe crossed the line eighth after losing the lead late. Ross Chastain was ninth, and Ty Gibbs completed the top 10. Meanwhile, two title contenders had rough afternoons further back.
First, Denny Hamlin finished 28th after a blown tire. Points leader Kyle Larson finished 34th, and that result reshaped the standings.
Logano’s stages and Larson’s long day
Logano, meanwhile, did most of his scoring early. He won Stage 1, leading its final nine laps, and then won Stage 2 as well. The AP report notes that the stage sweep earned him the maximum 20 stage points.
Larson, by contrast, never found speed. He qualified 22nd and struggled all day, according to both NASCAR and AP. Then, on Lap 283, a right-front tire failed in Turn 1. His car went into the outside wall, and he retired from the race with three points.
“We never found the improvements we needed, so that was a bummer,” Larson said afterward, as quoted in NASCAR’s recap. As a result, Larson left Phoenix with his lead cut from 49 points over Hamlin to five over Bell.
The Chase standings after Phoenix
Larson entered the weekend 49 points ahead of Hamlin with four races left. He still leads, but the margin has nearly disappeared. The AP report by David Brandt lists the gaps this way.
- Christopher Bell: 5 points behind Larson
- Chase Briscoe: 24 points behind
- Denny Hamlin: 31 points behind
- Ryan Blaney: 40 points behind
- Joey Logano: 44 points behind
- Tyler Reddick: 56 points behind
That puts six drivers within 56 points of the top. Chase Elliott, by comparison, sits 149 points back despite his third-place finish. NASCAR’s recap says seven drivers remain in contention with three races to go.
For Reddick, the win matters beyond the trophy. He is the last of the six chasers, but he is now inside the group. Also, his early-season run of five wins in nine races shows how quickly the No. 45 can stack results when it finds speed.
What comes next
The series moves to Talladega Superspeedway for the YellaWood 500, the eighth of the 10 postseason races. NASCAR lists the start for next Sunday at 2 p.m. ET on NBC.
Talladega is a superspeedway, so drafting and pack racing replace the flat-track handling that decided Phoenix. Meanwhile, Bell sits only five points behind Larson heading in.
Reddick, meanwhile, enters Talladega with six wins this season, the most recent coming on Lap 312 at Phoenix. Officially, he beat Blaney by 0.801 seconds, and he now trails Larson by 56 points with three races left.
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