He’s back, ladies and gentlemen. After six months away from Victory Lane, Tyler Reddick finally remembered where they keep the trophies, using a perfectly timed two-tire strategy at Phoenix Raceway Sunday to claim his first NASCAR Cup Series victory since April and his sixth of the 2026 season.
For a driver who had spent the better part of half a year watching other people celebrate, Reddick made up for lost time in a hurry. The 23XI Racing driver led exactly the laps that mattered, grabbing the lead with 17 laps remaining and holding off Ryan Blaney to end his drought in a race that tightened the Chase standings considerably.
Kyle Larson still leaves Phoenix at the top of the standings, but his once-comfortable 49-point advantage has been reduced to just five. With three races remaining in the Chase, the championship fight has gone from a situation that looked reasonably comfortable for Larson to one that could get downright uncomfortable in a hurry.
Reddick’s winning move came during the final round of pit stops, triggered by the sixth caution of the afternoon when Larson’s Chevrolet suffered a tire failure and slammed into the outside wall.
The leaders headed for pit road, and Reddick’s crew chief, Billy Scott, made the call to take just two tires. Reddick emerged among the leaders, while Bubba Wallace took four tires and dropped to sixth. Chase Briscoe, Chase Elliott and Ty Gibbs went with the alternative strategy, staying on the track and hoping their old tires would hold enough grip to survive the final run.
Spoiler alert: That plan didn’t work out quite as well.
Briscoe led the field to the restart, but Reddick was already on the move. Restarting fifth, he charged through a four-wide group and emerged in second place by the end of the opening lap. One lap later, Reddick took the lead, leaving Briscoe behind and Blaney with a mountain to climb.
Blaney, who had won the previous two Phoenix races, did his best to catch the No. 45 Toyota but couldn’t quite get there. He finished 0.801 seconds behind Reddick.
Reddick credited both the strategy and the opening he found on the restart for making the difference.
“Good strategy,” Reddick said. “I think Billy had a really good idea what we needed to do there, going off what our balance was. Yeah, just got really fortunate. I didn’t have a good launch. There was a hole. I was able to get through it.”
He also managed to make life difficult for Briscoe in the process.
“I thought the 19 was going to be able to cover the move into three. I got him loose. We checked out.”
It was the sort of decisive move that makes a six-month wait for another victory seem worthwhile. Almost.
“That’s way too long,” Reddick said when asked whether the wait made the celebration sweeter.
It was the perfect ending to a day that had started with considerably less certainty.
“For us, this group never lost motivation, never lost the drive to keep searching and keep trying to find ways to make ourselves better, just be an all-around better team,” Reddick said.
“Something about today. It didn’t really start right. Just something about today, I had a really good feeling. Practice was amazing. Yeah, we’re back to Victory Lane.”
Reddick’s crew made sure that feeling turned into something tangible.
The afternoon had been anything but straightforward, with tire failures, pit road miscues and a handful of incidents repeatedly shuffling the running order. Even the stage winners found themselves fighting through traffic, while the championship contenders endured a day that ranged from frustrating to downright miserable.
The first major incident came on Lap 45 when Riley Herbst and Michael McDowell, who had been trading paint around 19th and 20th, apparently decided a little more contact was in order. Herbst booted McDowell into the outside wall, bringing out a caution and giving teams an early opportunity to gamble on tire strategy.
Several took the two-tire option, including Larson, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott and William Byron. Larson had started 24th and had struggled to make much progress, reaching no higher than 17th. The stop vaulted him to fifth, seemingly giving the championship leader a chance to salvage some stage points with fewer than 10 laps remaining in Stage 1.
Seemingly was the operative word.
Larson promptly dropped through the field, finishing the stage outside the points. Joey Logano, who had taken four tires, collected the most stage points with the stage win, while pole-sitter Blaney recovered from another slow pit stop to finish fourth.
Logano won the race off pit road and led Christopher Bell to the restart for Stage 2 on Lap 69. Bell grabbed the lead, but Logano eventually reeled him in and took over again on Lap 123 as Bell headed for a green-flag stop. Logano pitted three laps later, allowing Bell to cycle back to the front.
Then, because Phoenix apparently wasn’t finished rearranging the furniture, another tire failure brought out the caution.
Austin Dillon’s Chevrolet lost its right-rear tire on Lap 157 and slammed into the outside wall, ending his afternoon. With several other drivers reporting tire problems, the leaders opted for four tires on their stops.
Larson, still a lap down, stayed out and took the wave-around to return to the lead lap. His immediate task was to keep himself there until the stage ended, a considerably less glamorous assignment than collecting points but an important one, nonetheless.
Logano took the green with just over 20 laps remaining in the stage and held on to complete the sweep of both stages. Larson, meanwhile, managed to remain on the lead lap, giving himself at least a little breathing room heading into the final segment.
Logano led the field to the start of the final stage on Lap 192, with Wallace closing in as the race moved toward its final stretch.
Then came another tire problem, this time for Hamlin.
Running fourth on Lap 220, Hamlin lost a right-rear tire but managed to keep his Toyota under control long enough to reach pit road. Cody Ware wasn’t quite so fortunate. He also suffered a right-rear failure, but his car spun into the outside wall, bringing out another caution.
The yellow flag offered Hamlin a possible route back onto the lead lap. Unfortunately, a speeding penalty on pit road wiped out that opportunity, leaving him to fight his way back through traffic and hope another caution would provide a second chance.
Wallace inherited the lead after Logano suffered another slow stop, dropping to fifth. Wallace led the restart on Lap 231 with 81 laps remaining, while Hamlin continued his efforts to become the first car a lap down and put himself in position to benefit from another yellow flag.
Wallace eventually cycled back to the lead with 38 laps remaining, setting the stage for the late caution that changed everything.
Larson had slowly worked his way forward to 15th, a modest recovery after a miserable afternoon. But with the championship leader already fighting an uphill battle, another tire failure sent his Chevrolet into the outside wall and ended his race.
The resulting caution set up the decisive pit stops. Reddick and several other contenders took two tires, while Wallace took four and emerged sixth. But a speeding penalty then derailed Wallace’s bid to contend for the win.
Briscoe, Elliott and Gibbs stayed out, gambling that track position would compensate for their older tires. Instead, Reddick’s fresh rubber gave him precisely the advantage he needed.
The No. 45 Toyota surged through traffic, grabbed the lead and never gave it back.
Blaney finished second, followed by Elliott and Bell. Corey Heim claimed fifth, with Logano sixth and Daniel Suarez seventh. Briscoe held on for eighth, while Ross Chastain and Gibbs completed the top 10.
For Blaney, second place was a solid result after a day in which pit road repeatedly threatened to spoil his chances.
“I thought the first run of the race we were pretty good,” Blaney said. “Had the yellow there, lost some track position. I didn’t seem as good after that. The 22 got good, the 20 got good, the 19.”
Blaney and his team spent much of the afternoon trying to improve the car, and he believed they had made enough progress to give themselves a legitimate shot at the victory.
“I thought before the past pit stop we drove up to fourth or fifth,” he said. “So proud of the effort everyone sticking with it all day, fighting it out, giving us a shot to win at the end. Didn’t quite have enough to chase down the 45.”
The result also gives Blaney reason to believe the remaining three races can still produce a championship opportunity.
“Control what you can control,” he said. “I feel like we do a great job in our building of working together and having each other’s backs. I feel like we’re going to do the same thing this upcoming week. Bring fast cars. It will be a fun one. Definitely attainable. We’ll have to go to work.”
Next up is Talladega Superspeedway, where controlling what happens on the track can sometimes feel like trying to herd cats through a car wash. The final race after that will determine who advances from the Chase’s closing stretch with the championship within reach.
Larson remains the driver everyone must catch, but his advantage has all but disappeared. The late tire failure that ended his day did more than spoil an afternoon of hard work. It transformed the championship picture, leaving the points leader with almost no margin for error.
And Reddick? He can finally stop answering questions about when his next win is coming.
Six months is a long time to wait in NASCAR. On Sunday, he made sure the wait ended with a trophy.
RACE RESULTS
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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