Darlington, SC – A dead battery, a good suit that got too hot and a big deficit to the leader with less than 50 laps remaining at Darlington Raceway.
The “track too tough to tame” tested Tyler Reddick in every way possible on Sunday, and this year’s top star in NASCAR naturally delivered a spectacular performance for his fourth win of the season.
“I know to never give up,” said Reddick, who advanced after three runner-up finishes on the difficult 1.366-mile oval. “I think it’s very fitting that ‘The Lady in Black’ will test us in similar fashion when we finally get our first win here at Darlington. We’ve been so close so many times.”
Starting from the pole position for the 23XI Racing team co-owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan, Reddick led 77 laps in the No. 45 Toyota for his 12th career win. Chasing Brad Keselowski after his final pit stop, Reddick won by a 5.847-second margin.
Ryan Blaney finished third, followed by Carson Hocevar and Austin Cindric.
Problems began on the first lap for Reddick, who radioed his team about an alternator problem that had caused his voltage to drop dangerously low. The team swapped out a larger capacity battery in their Camry after the first stage, but the charging problem persisted.
Reddick had to turn off power to his cockpit fan and his cool suit, which provides driver comfort through a water circulation system. During a subsequent pit stop, Reddick drained water from the suit, which had begun to cook due to temperatures in the 80s.
“The battery was not charging at all,” Reddick said. “Just not blowing fans all day and sweating inside the race car. We knew it was going to be physical. It got really rough, but I guess I don’t need that cold thing as much as I normally do.”
It may not have been quite the “Flu Game” performance that Jordan delivered in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals, but it still pleased the basketball great.
“Pretty sure it’s disappointing for him because he had an incredible car, and I think the key to his win was just keeping his head up,” said Jordan, who has been rooting for every Reddick win this season and got a chance to celebrate Sunday at a track he visited with his family decades ago as a kid growing up in North Carolina. “We just had to fix the car, and I think he did an incredible job.
“I just want everything to go well, because once he gets back out there, I think his competitive juice will carry him to the end. He earned it all week, and I’m really proud of the team.”
Keselowski led a race-high six times for 142 laps. But the Roush Fenway Keselowski driver made his final pit stop four laps earlier than Reddick, who made the most of the fresh rubber to erase a seven-second gap and complete the winning pass on the 266th of 293 laps.
“We didn’t have the best car today compared to Tyler,” Keselowski said. “Tyler ran a great race, and he’s running a rocket right now and making it count.”
Reddick began the season with a Daytona 500 victory on his way to becoming the first driver in NASCAR history to win the first three races of the season. He joined NASCAR Hall of Famers Dale Earnhardt (1987) and Bill Elliott (1992) as the only Cup drivers to win four of the first six races in a season.
Tire management always matters on the abrasive surface at Darlington, and drivers had to deal with increased wear on Sunday due to the new car rules.
But despite predictions of chaos from a 12% increase in horsepower and a 25% reduction in downforce (which helps maintain traction through turns at higher speeds), drivers mostly kept their cars out of control.
The race featured four yellow flags – including only one for a multicar incident – the fewest caution periods at Darlington since three in the March 21, 1999 race, after the race was shortened due to rain. The last full-length race at Darlington with fewer than four cautions was the 1998 Southern 500, with two yellows on September 6, 1998.
“It was a lot of fun to ride today,” said Blaney, who overcame two mediocre pit stops for a career-best third-place finish at Darlington. “I thought the package was really fun.”
Despite constant predictions of chaos due to the new car rules, the first 91 laps unfolded without any interruptions under the green flag. This was the fifth consecutive race in which the first stage was completed with the caution flag down.
The NASCAR Cup Series now heads to Martinsville Speedway for the first short track race of the 2026 season on Sunday, March 29. A year earlier, Denny Hamlin snapped a 31-race winless streak with his first win in 10 years at Martinsville, where he made six wins in the series.
