Tyler Reddick was four years old the first time he strapped into an Outlaw Kart, long before Daytona had any reason to know his name. Now the name is on a ballot next to Lando Norris, Kimi Antonelli and Alex Palou, the four biggest storylines in motorsport this year, all nominated for the same trophy at the same ceremony on the same night.
The 2026 ESPYS Best Driver Award will be handed out July 15 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York, and Reddick is the only NASCAR representative in the category. Kimi Antonelli and Lando Norris carry Formula 1’s flag into the room, while Alex Palou represents IndyCar as its reigning dominant force. Reddick stands alone for stock cars, and the résumé that put him there reads like the kind of season NASCAR fans wait years to see.
A Season That Started With History
Reddick opened 2026 by winning the Daytona 500, and he didn’t stop there. He followed it with wins in the next two races, becoming the first driver in Cup Series history to open a season with three consecutive victories. Wins at Darlington and Kansas extended the run further, and by the time the dust settled on the year’s first nine races, Reddick had matched a mark set by Dale Earnhardt in 1987: five wins in nine starts.
The Daytona win alone carried significance beyond the trophy. Going into Turn 3 on the final lap, Reddick’s teammate Riley Herbst gave him a push that carried him past Zane Smith and race leader Chase Elliott, who wrecked behind him as the field crossed the line. It marked the first Daytona 500 victory for 23XI Racing, the team co-owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin, and the first Toyota to win the race after Hamlin’s own victory in 2020.
The Dirt Track Roots Behind the Résumé
Long before Victory Lane at Daytona, Reddick was cutting his teeth on dirt. He raced Outlaw Karts starting at age four, then moved up through mini sprints, midgets, dirt late models and sprint cars as a kid learning car control on the loosest surfaces in racing. He became the youngest driver to qualify on the pole for the World 100 at Eldora Speedway, one of dirt racing’s most demanding events, and the youngest winner of the East Bay Winter Nationals and the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.
That background shaped a driver who reads a racetrack differently than most of his Cup Series peers. Reddick’s path into NASCAR’s national series began in 2014 with Brad Keselowski Racing in the Truck Series, and he spent 2015 and 2016 running full seasons there, picking up three wins and 31 top-10 finishes along the way. From there, he became the first driver in any NASCAR national series to win consecutive Xfinity Series championships with two different teams, taking titles in 2018 and 2019 before graduating to Cup in 2020.
Finding a Home at 23XI
Reddick’s move to 23XI Racing became one of the more closely watched contract stories of the past several years. The team announced in July 2022 that Reddick had signed for a full-time Cup ride beginning in 2024, then accelerated the timeline that October by buying out the remainder of his contract with Richard Childress Racing so he could replace Kurt Busch in the No. 45 car for 2023.
That kind of maneuvering, a team paying to get a driver a year early, signals the level of belief 23XI had in Reddick before he’d won a single race in their colors. Entering 2026 as a contract year only raised the stakes further. Instead of feeling the pressure, Reddick used it as fuel, delivering the best start to a season any 23XI driver has produced and giving Jordan’s team its signature win at the sport’s biggest race.
Breaking a Drought Before Building a Streak
What makes Reddick’s start to 2026 land even harder is what came right before it. He arrived at Daytona carrying a 38-race winless stretch, a run long enough to draw questions about whether his move to 23XI had stalled out. The Daytona 500 victory snapped that drought in the most public way possible, on the sport’s biggest stage, and Reddick didn’t treat it as a one-off. He backed it up at EchoPark Speedway’s Autotrader 400, then again at Circuit of the Americas and Darlington, stacking four wins in a stretch that turned a question mark into an exclamation point.
The run gave Reddick an early points lead over his own teammate, Bubba Wallace, by 40 points, a gap that reset the entire conversation around 23XI Racing’s two cars. A team once defined by its ownership group, Michael Jordan’s name recognition and Denny Hamlin’s résumé as a driver-owner, suddenly had a points leader of its own making headlines for what happened on the racetrack rather than who signed the checks.
Standing Alongside F1 and IndyCar’s Biggest Names
The company Reddick keeps on this ballot says something about where his season ranks among every form of motorsport, not just stock cars. Antonelli enters the ESPYS as the reigning Formula 1 points leader in his rookie season with Mercedes, a storyline that has captivated F1 fans around the world. Norris carries the standing of being the reigning World Drivers’ Champion. Palou has spent the year defending an IndyCar points lead while chasing a fourth consecutive title, a feat that would put him in territory only a handful of drivers in the series’ history have reached.
Being named alongside three drivers competing at that level puts Reddick’s Daytona 500 win and record-tying start in a different light. NASCAR’s only representative in the category isn’t just having a good year by stock car standards. Voters are being asked to weigh his three-week win streak and Earnhardt-matching run against Antonelli’s rookie title push and Palou’s pursuit of history, and Reddick made the cut anyway.
A Long Wait for NASCAR
Reddick has a chance to end a drought that has lasted four years, dating back to when Kyle Larson became the most recent NASCAR driver to win the Best Driver Award in 2022. In total, 19 NASCAR drivers have taken home the honor over the award’s history, with Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon each winning it four times, a reminder of how thin the recent NASCAR win column has become at an award show that used to treat the sport as a regular guest at the podium.
Whether Reddick can add his name to that list will come down to fan voting, which remains open through the ceremony. Comedian Marcello Hernandez will host the July 15 show, broadcast on ABC and streamed on the ESPN App, with Reddick’s category scheduled as the 17th award of the night.
Reddick’s own reaction to the news carried the measured tone of a driver who knows the season isn’t finished. “Truly honored to be nominated for The 2026 ESPYS Best Driver Award,” he wrote. “Our 45 team started this season hot, but job’s not finished.” Not everyone in his own garage was thrilled about the snub list, though. Denny Hamlin, Reddick’s teammate and co-owner at 23XI Racing, reached last season’s championship four and still missed the cut, and Hamlin’s podcast producer Travis Rockhold made the frustration public on X. “Clearly they just look at wins for the season. This is stupid. Do better @ESPYS,” Rockhold wrote, arguing the award should weigh a full body of work rather than a single season. Hamlin himself stayed quiet on the subject, leaving Reddick to represent both his own breakout year and, by proxy, a 23XI operation that many in the garage feel has been racing at the front for longer than one ballot suggests.
Kyle Larson, the reigning Cup Series champion, was left off the list as well, adding another layer to the debate over who should have filled NASCAR’s lone seat at the table. None of that takes anything away from what Reddick built over nine races in the winter and spring. A 38-race drought ended at the biggest race on the calendar, then turned into a run matched by only one other driver in Cup Series history.
For a driver who grew up chasing sprint car checkered flags on bullrings most fans have never heard of, an evening at Lincoln Center competing against the faces of Formula 1 and IndyCar represents a distance traveled that’s hard to measure in points or trophies. Reddick built the foundation for this nomination one dirt lap at a time, long before Daytona, Darlington or Kansas ever came into view. Whatever happens when the envelope opens on July 15, the season he authored to get there already stands on its own.
