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Tyler Reddick Looking For A Reset At Darlington Raceway After Narrowly Advancing To NASCAR Playoffs

by Hunter Thomas August 25, 2025 0 comments

DARLINGTON, SC – Tyler Reddick enters the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway looking for a reset after just narrowly earning a berth in the NASCAR Playoffs.

This time last year, Reddick was celebrating the Regular Season championship at the Lady in Black, but the 2025 season has not been so kind to the California native. In fact, the 23XI Racing No. 45 team has yet to visit Victory Lane and what makes matters even more challenging is the ongoing lawsuit the organization has with NASCAR.

This past weekend at Daytona International Speedway, Reddick had a fairly comfortable points advantage heading into the final race of the Regular Season, but he crashed early, opening the door for Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman to temporarily surpass him in the standings.

Reddick could have fallen victim to a new winner that would knock him out of the Playoffs; however, that didn’t happen and in fact, it was Bowman who was then placed back on the bubble after being involved in a huge crash. Bowman retired from the race and had to sit and wait to see if there was going to be a new winner. Reddick’s team repaired the car and secured a 21^st-place finish with enough points to move on to the NASCAR Playoffs.

“It was pretty destroyed,” Reddick said. “That was all my doing there at the start of the race. They bailed me out of it. It just seems like all year long we’ve been having to bail each other out of mistakes and bad choices.”

Reddick now enters Darlington Raceway 14^th in the NASCAR Playoffs, one point below the Round of 12 cutline. This is the scenario where Playoff points from wins becomes so valuable. Since Reddick hasn’t won, he doesn’t have any, and so he’s already kicking off the Round of 16 in an uncomfortable position.

“Yeah, but we have no Playoff points so it’s a negative reset,” Reddick said. “I don’t know. We’ll certainly need to be on top of it every round. We’re capable of it, we just haven’t done it.”

The good news for Reddick is he’s historically extremely competitive at Darlington Raceway. In the past four races at the track, he has led 307 laps. In last year’s Cook Out Southern 500, he finished 10^th and the year prior, he was runner-up to race winner, Kyle Larson. In the spring of this season, he finished fourth in the Goodyear 400.

One of the most comforting stats for Reddick is that he has completed 99.9% of the laps in 12 starts at Darlington Raceway, so he has always, for the most part, tamed the track Too Tough To Tame.

“Darlington has always been a really good race track for us and for myself as a driver,” Reddick said. “I feel like pretty much every time we’ve been there, we’ve been able to lead laps and contend and in the top-five. I think it will be very important to go in there and perform at the level we’ve been able to in the past.”

If Reddick can finish well at Darlington, he’ll then enter World Wide Technology Raceway, where he has had up and down finishes but just last year, he finished fourth. Clutch performances at both tracks will then potentially set Reddick up to have some breathing room at Bristol Motor Speedway, where he has struggled in the past.

The Cook Out Southern 500, which is Darlington Raceway’s 75^th anniversary, will broadcast live on USA on Sunday, Aug. 31, at 6 p.m. ET.

Photo Credit: Hunter Thomas/TheFourthTurn.com