After 77 years and 2,789 races, Tyler Reddick became the first NASCAR Cup Series driver to win the first three races in a season on Sunday, March 1.
Reddick added the DuraMAX Texas Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) to his trophy case, which already included the Daytona 500 and Autotrader 400.
Reddick’s historic feat was never in doubt after he took pole position on Saturday and led 58 out of the 95 laps, including the final 45 laps at COTA.
The closest Reddick got to losing the lead in the closing laps was on lap 75 when a caution came out following Ross Chastain losing a tire on track.
When the green flag flew, Shane Van Gisbergen jumped Blaney for second and looked to take on Reddick for first place. However, Reddick drove flawlessly the rest of the way and even put a four second gap between him and the Trackhouse driver.
His win at COTA also snapped Van Gisbergen’s streak of five road course race wins, preventing him from tying Jeff Gordon’s record of six in a row.
Van Gisbergen, widely known as the best road course driver in the Cup Series, led only two laps during the entire race.
Reddick is also squarely in first place in the standings with teammate Bubba Wallace 70 points behind in second and Chase Elliott two points behind Wallace.
Van Gisbergen, who finished well below sixteenth at the end of the 2025 regular season, is currently sat in fifth place through the first three races. It looks like Van Gisbergen made major improvements on ovals in the offseason, finishing sixth at EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta for his highest finish on an oval in his career.
The next race for the Cup Series is the Straight Talk Wireless 500 at Phoenix Raceway next Sunday at 3:30pm.
Christopher Bell won the 312 lap race in March last year, leading 105 total laps and scoring a race high 57 points.
In that spring race, 11 drivers did not finish, including Van Gisbergen and Wallace.
Kyle Larson won the first stage in that race while Josh Berry won the second stage.
In the fall Phoenix race, Ryan Blaney won while leading 20 out of the 319 laps and scoring a race high 58 points.
The driver who led the most laps was Denny Hamlin who led 208 but finished sixth. Hamlin failed to win the Championship, falling just three places short to Kyle Larson in third.
Hamlin’s teammate Chase Briscoe won stage one while Larson’s teammate Chase Elliott won stage two.
Reddick, who looks to make it four wins in a row to start the season finished No. 20 in the spring race, grabbing 32 points and No. 26 in the fall race, only getting 11 points.
Those two races can be seen as outliers for Reddick since he arrived at 23XI Racing with an average finish of 14.5 in the past six races at Phoenix. That would place him No. 14 out of 52 drivers who raced in any Phoenix race in the past 3 years.
Reddick’s highest finish at Phoenix is third, which he achieved on March 12, 2023, and March 13, 2022, with 23XI Racing and Richard Childress Racing respectively.
Although Reddick hasn’t seen the top step at Phoenix yet, he seems to be on a generational run so far this season. So don’t be surprised if Tyler Reddick is standing on the top step again at Phoenix Raceway.