Tyler Reddick roars back for win at Darlington Raceway, his fourth of the season
Tyler Reddick’s dominant start to the NASCAR Cup Series continued Sunday.
Reddick overcame an early problem with his car’s battery and went on to win the Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, Reddick’s fourth win in six races this season.
Reddick is just the third driver in Cup Series history to win four of the first six races of a season, joining NASCAR Hall of Famers Dale Earnhardt and Bill Elliott.
“Just honored to be in the same sentence as those two guys. ... It is stuff you dream of,” Reddick said . “You never know if it is going to be a reality. You are just thankful you are able to work with a team and put together days like this where you grind through these issues, overcome it and win races.”
It was Reddick’s first win in 14 starts at the track dubbed Too Tough to Tame. Reddick drives for 23XI Racing, co-owned by NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan, who was in attendance at Darlington .
Reddick extended his points lead to 95 points over Ryan Blaney and 120 over teammate Bubba Wallace.
It didn’t look good for Reddick as he radioed in to his team about an alternator issue that was causing low voltage in the car. He headed to pit road on lap 92 to change his battery, which wasn’t charging. Because of that, crew chief Billy Scott said they were on edge if the new battery was going to hold out for the rest of the race.
Scott even gave Reddick the option to come back down pit road late in the race to put in another battery just in case. Reddick declined and decided to do other preventive measures, including draining out his cool suit and turning it off for the final stage.
“The final 100 laps were brutally hot,” Reddick said. “... But I was all in because I really, really wanted to win here. With a car as good as we had here, I was willing to take that risk. I fought through the heat and everything to win the race.”
Reddick said the lack of cool suit, while difficult, wasn’t as bad as the sickness he battled at Darlington in the 2024 Southern 500 in which he was vomiting but still finished in the top 10 and clinched a playoff spot that year.
On Sunday, Reddick, the race’s pole sitter, finally worked his way to the top and drove underneath Brad Keselowski in Turn 2 with 28 laps left and went on to win the race.
Keselowski was second, Ryan Blaney third, Carson Hocevar fourth, and Austin Cindric fifth.
Keselowski won the first two stages of the race and was looking to snap an almost two-year winless streak. He also wanted to win for his late teammate Greg Biffle, as Keselowski and other RFK Racing teammates had numbers on the car similar to those on Biffle’s car when he drove. Biffle died late last year in a plane crash in North Carolina.
“I was thinking about how cool that would be (to win) for Greg with the schemes on the car,” Keselowski said. “Tyler was in a class of his own, all weekend. If we short pitted him, he was going to beat us that way. If we long-pitted him, he was going to beat us. He had way more speed. But of the cars we were in the same class, I thought we executed really well today.”
Like Reddick, Blaney had his own problems early in the race. During a pit stop, Blaney was forced to take longer to tighten a wheel, pushing him from fourth to 20th — the last car on the lead lap to start stage two.
“Come on, guys. We gotta be cleaner than that. We just cannot do this,” Blaney said on his radio after the mistake. “We’ve got to clean it up. We cannot afford to make mistakes like this.”
This wasn’t the first time this year a mistake on pit road has hurt his chances for a win. He has had three loose wheels in his last three races. During the race, a graphic on TV broadcast showed Blaney’s pit crew ranked 33rd out of 36 teams coming into the day. Shortly after the race, Blaney spent several minutes talking with his team.
“I was happy that we got back to where we did for sure,” Blaney said.
Sunday’s race at Darlington was the first one at the track with the new rules package that includes increased horsepower, reduced aerodynamic downforce and Goodyear tires maximized for wear and management on one of the sport’s most treacherous tracks.
But the racing action didn’t have the chaos that some drivers predicted coming into the race.
Keselowski said the new rules package made it hard to drive the cars and he “was just trying to finish each lap.” Denny Hamlin said it definitely was extremely hard to pass in the race.
Aside from figuring out how to drive at Darlington with the new rules package, drivers were left wondering how they can get on the same page and catch up to Reddick this season. That included Hamlin, Reddick’s co-team owner at 23XI Racing who drives for Joe Gibbs Racing. Hamlin said Sunday’s performance was the most complete he has seen this season from 23XI.
“I will look at it, study it, try to learn something from it. Clearly they got it figured out,” Hamlin said. “Everyone gives it their best with the information they got, and they clearly have the right answer. They brought they speed this weekend and Tyler showcased it.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2026 at 6:45 PM with the headline "Tyler Reddick roars back for win at Darlington Raceway, his fourth of the season."
