Tyler Reddick channels Michael Jordan with first three-peat

March 2, 2026 · Yahoo Sports

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Before the Cup Series race at Circuit of the Americas on Sunday, Michael Jordan wanted Tyler Reddick to know that ‘three-peats’ are kind of his brand, the one the 30-year-old has inherited at 23XI Racing.

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During his time as the face of the National Basketball Association, Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to a pair of three-consecutive championships from 1991-to-1993 and again from 1996-to-1988.

After winning the Daytona 500 and Atlanta Motor Speedway races to open the 2026 season, there was only one thing left for Reddick to do to maintain his credibility with His Airness.

“Yeah, he reminded me early this week (that) he does things in threes,” said Reddick. “He expected no less today. I was really glad to be able to live up to the standards that he has for us and be able to deliver three in a row. That was really cool to share that moment with him.”

Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing, Michael Jordan

Reddick claimed the pole on Saturday and followed it up with his third straight victory, which is all the more impressive when you consider they came on three different style of subdisciplines.

Superspeedway
Superintermediate
Road Course

It’s something that left his other team owner, and rival driver, Denny Hamlin in legitimate awe.

“It’s unbelievable,” Hamlin said. “I’m not going to see it again in my lifetime, someone to go out there and win three races in a row to start the season. Yeah, what a dream start for those guys. All kinds of — got Atlanta and Daytona and here. It’s just different tracks. It’s not necessarily one type.

“Atlanta is quite a bit different than Daytona in how you drive there, so it’s just getting it done in all kinds of different ways.”

It’s not even the fact that the third win came on a road course but that he outdueled Shane Van Gisbergen to do it. This race had kind of set up an irresistible force versus immovable object in that Reddick was aiming to set a record for most wins to open a season and ‘SVG’ was looking to tie Jeff Gordon with six consecutive road course wins.

Something had to give.

“This is pretty crazy …” Reddick said. “I think it's so fitting that it had to happen coming into here, a place where I got my first pole years ago, a place that, road course wise, is a great fit for me.

“But I just had a feeling no matter where Shane was going to start, Connor, some of those guys, even Blaney was starting towards the front, I just had a feeling at the end there I was going to see Shane at some point. Obviously, he blew my doors off at the beginning of the race but that restart played out perfectly for him to slot into second. I'm like, ‘of course there he is; I'm going to have to find a way to hold him off.’

“And in this day and age of Cup racing, the Daytona 500 is so hard to win. It's so hard to survive at EchoPark Speedway, and we were able to do that. And to be able to hold off Shane at the end of that race to make it three in a row, yeah, it seems just very fitting that we had to go through the hurdles we did, especially these last two weeks, to pull this off.”

Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing

That’s the other thing too.

This isn’t like previous eras of the old cars where Jeff Gordon and Kyle Larson could win 13 and 10 races respectively on the might of better equipment. He’s doing it driving the same spec platform that largely everyone else has and Hamlin says his driver is practically a finished perfect product seven years into his tenure at the highest level.

“He’s complete,” Hamlin said. “The one area that we continue to work on with him is on the short tracks. I think that’s where he can still improve a little bit. But we’re working pretty hard on improving him at those types of tracks.

“But he’s complete. Certainly, more complete than I am at this stage, where I’ve got a handful of races where it’s like, it would be tough for us to go out there and compete for a win. There’s less of those for him.

“He’s got a lot of really good things going on. I think it’s just — we’re steadily seeing him continue to get better. What I love to see is the work that he puts in and the things that we provide him for information. He’s soaking it all in and he’s using it and executing it.”

How true that statement that is will be put to the test where his one imperfection is a short track like Phoenix. Remember that Reddick and crew chief Billy Scott advanced to the championship race at Phoenix in 2024 but was a distant afterthought compared to his peers that weekend.

“In my opinion, we go to the spring Phoenix race, we're typically, like, right there,” Reddick said, citing numerous misfortunes that negative skew his statistics. “For whatever reason, when we go in the fall, we're a little bit off.

“But I feel like we've, again, kind of like we've done here -- I'm really excited to see what we have for speed and pace over the next two weekends because we've worked really hard to improve things here.

“We've worked hard to kind of rethink how we get around Phoenix, and we've just kind of doubled down on the things that we've been improving at Vegas. Honestly, I'm very excited to see what kind of pace we have at Phoenix and Vegas as it comes up.”

Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing

This is a celebration for Hamlin too because Jordan says, for all of his presence and enthusiasm, that he’s just the money man behind 23XI Racing. His history with Jordan is well-document, especially after the lawsuit with NASCAR that really fleshed out their highs and lows doing this together.

Jordan is a legitimate NASCAR enthusiast who struck up a friendship with Hamlin, whom attended Charlotte Hornets games, and started a Cup Series team a decade later. Now both of their drivers continue to run first and second in the standings.

“I’m proud of the team that we’ve put together,” MJ said on the FOX broadcast immediately after the race. “Denny I’m pretty sure is the same way. He feels the same way I do. I think a lot of credit goes to him because I think he’s the mastermind behind finding Tyler and putting together Billy Scott.

“Look, I just put up the money. I’m just a competitor. But I think Denny has done an unbelievable job in terms of helping build this team, and I think the team has done a good job of taking on leadership and going out and winning. That’s what it’s about, winning.”

Watch: Hear from the expert: Michael Jordan shares reaction to latest three-peat

Hamlin calls it a ‘perfect partnership’ because it only works because he’s given the ‘autonomy’ to run it. There have been moments that have tested that autonomy, with Hamlin even asking his friend to buy him out, but that never happened.

Ultimately, Hamlin has built this organization and is reaping the benefits of it, even as they beat him on the track.

“When I started kicking around trying to find a race team that would let me buy in, none of them were going to give me the control that I wanted,” Hamlin said. “I don’t know what the word is for that, but I wanted to make sure if it failed, it was because of something I did, not someone else.

“When the stars aligned and we were able to start this and I was able to get him as a partner, he was — I was just so appreciative of the fact that he says, okay, here’s my percent, here’s your percent, but you’re going to have to build it. You’re going to have to do the work. You’re the boots on the ground. That was what I wanted. Where I get the gratification is from building something from scratch.

“Again, this team had, like, three employees working out of Mike Wheeler’s garage. There was nothing. We had zero. We didn’t buy a team, didn’t do anything. Just built it. This is what we’re doing. It’s pretty amazing.”

Full circle, every three-peat championship begins with one, and now Reddick has a 70 point lead over Wallace and 72 over Chase Elliott. And while the Chase for the Championship does reset the points, the regular season champion will start the final 10 with a 25 point advantage and that is ever the reason to keep pushing.

“We'll just manage it lap after lap, corner after corner,” Reddick said. “Certainly, yeah, like as we race, I'll just have to be mindful, understand what I'm racing for in those moments, is it worth the risk or is it not.

“But certainly I think to an extent, if we just continue to bring really fast race cars, we won't have to put ourselves in tricky spots in the race. We're able to kind of race a little bit smarter.

“For me, I really enjoyed racing for points in 2024 when we had that battle come down to the end at Darlington with Larson to win the regular season championship then. For me, I enjoy this. I know it's ironic I'm saying that with a 70-point lead, but just to be able to execute in the first two races that are just hard to have clean days, to get the points that we did there, and then come in here and be able to grab stage points in Stage 2 and then obviously win the race is real special.”

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— Tyler Reddick (@TylerReddick) March 2, 2026

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