It wasn’t obvious after the first three races, or so we told ourselves. Tyler Reddick was 3-for-3, but it was only March. Early March, at that.
Then he won Darlington a few weeks later, and that got us pondering the possibility.
And now we have Kansas as the ultimate evidence that, yes indeed, Tyler Reddick isn’t just a legitimate championship contender, but right now, he has to be the favorite.
And not just because of the 105-point lead he’s built, though the spread between first and second is comfortably larger than the 93-point spread between second and 11th.
Nope, Reddick is now the obvious favorite because he won at Kansas in spite of committing the one sin a stock-car racer can’t commit.
He ran out of gas.
Well, he wasn’t technically out, but if you can’t get fuel from your tank to your engine, you’re basically out of gas.
Oh, he also kinda wrecked a couple of times in the closing laps.
It’ll take something very big to derail the momentum carrying the No. 45 team. And guess what, there’s a monster approaching in the near distance.
First Gear: Two-pump Tyler Reddick does it again
A lot of onlookers learned — or maybe were just reminded — that the modern NASCAR stock car includes what the mechanical engineers might call redundancies.
Among them: Pump 2. Or, more accurately: PUMP 2, STAT!
Reddick seemed to have the edge on Denny Hamlin when the white flag was coming out of its holster. Hamlin was on older tires on a track where that matters a lot, yet he was enforcing his will on what was left of the Goodyear rubber and making Reddick work.
That’s when Denny got his big break — Reddick sent out a panicked radio squawk about being out of fuel, just as he also tagged the outside wall and lost the lead to Denny. Quick instruction from the pit box led to Reddick flipping to the car’s additional fuel pump, which did the pumping that the first pump could no longer do, for whatever reason.
Either the second pump was in a position, inside the tank, to access whatever fuel was left, or there was plenty of fuel and the original pump simply quit working.
Whatever, Reddick remained functional long enough for a spin near the back that ignited the caution lights. With the other leaders, he took on two tires as well as a splash of gas, of course. His final kinda/sorta wreck came when he roughed up Christoper Bell as he hustled to the lead and the eventual checkers.
Reddick’s five wins are the only five races in which he’s led laps, which either says a lot or says nothing. Your choice.
Either way, fighting through adversity is one thing. Getting a healthy dose of luck, when most needed, is icing. Unless you prefer gravy. Hamlin would take a dose of either right now.
Second Gear: Denny Hamlin not feeling Michael Jordan’s love. Or Cody Ware’s
What did Michael Jordan say to Hamlin on the post-race grid? Given the grin on Jordan’s face afterward, as well as his reputation for gleefully rubbing it in — the closer the friend, the sharper the needle, it seems — it wasn’t a generic pleasantry.
Hamlin’s face, a mix of frustration, disappointment and defeat, never changed. It was reminiscent of last November’s championship race at Phoenix, where a caution on the next-to-last lap took away a championship as well as a win. Last November, it was a William Byron spin that caused the ill-timed caution.
Sunday at Kansas, it was someone much deeper in the field, and Denny wasn’t thrilled.
“Cody Ware, six laps down, wrecking. Add it up,” Denny told Fox Sports.
OK, let’s try. He started first on the overtime restart. Three cars passed him over the two laps. Turns out, this is easy math. You don’t have to carry a number, do fractions or mess with decimal points. Finishing behind three others, Denny gets his first fourth-place finish of the year.
Also, he’s led the most laps in two of the past three races and has no trophy to show for it.
Third Gear: Trackhouse still reeling. Is it the Pitbull Curse?
Trackhouse Racing drivers combined for 14 wins over the previous four seasons. The current season completed its first quarter this past weekend with the ninth of 36 Cup races in 2026.
If this were football, Trackhouse would be down four touchdowns heading into the second period.
After just nine races, you might be tempted to ignore a team’s struggles, but this can’t be ignored. The three Trackhouse drivers — Ross Chastain, Shane van Gisbergen and hotshot rookie Connor Zilisch — have a combined three top-10 finishes, and they all came at a “plate race” and a road course.
Of 35 racers who have started all nine races, Trackhouse drivers sit 18th, 20th and 33rd in points. Yes, RCR has been a tad worse (one top-10 in 21 combined starts), but Trackhouse entered the season with bigger expectations.
On the bright side, this week brings Talladega, where any lack in machinery isn’t nearly as noticeable, and in three weeks, there’s a road course (Watkins Glen), which is a prime playground for SVG and Connor Z.
Not to suggest there’s a whammy in play here, but ever since Pitbull left his team-ownership role in February, 2025, Trackhouse has won just once on an oval.
Fourth Gear: Talladega coming to shake things up
Did someone say Talladega?
It’s easy to suggest Tyler Reddick’s current wining streak will end at one. There are just too many drivers and cars that can have a superspeedway “plate race” fall in their lap.
But for a smaller guy, Reddick’s lap is ample enough for such things.
He not only won Talladega’s spring race two years ago, but earlier this year, you might recall, he won a pretty big race at Talladega’s sister track in Daytona Beach.
— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR ruled by Tyler Reddick and Michael Jordan, not Denny Hamlin
Reporting by Ken Willis, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
