With each passing win to begin the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, Tyler Reddick’s run is starting to sound more and more like a tall tale.
Much like John Henry out-hammering the steam engine or Paul Bunyan carving out the Great Lakes, Reddick has authored his own mythological feats so far this year: Back-to-back victories on drafting tracks -Daytona and Atlanta – to open up the schedule, then 20 closing laps at Circuit of The Americas spent successfully fending off arguably the greatest road-course racer in Cup history, Shane van Gisbergen, to become the first driver ever to sweep the first three races of a season.
If Reddick’s legend grows any more, he might have to trade his fire suit for a flannel shirt and paint a big blue ox on the side of his No. 45 Toyota.
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But even folk heroes have their limits, and Reddick will be testing his this weekend at Phoenix Raceway. Not only is he fighting against history – only eight drivers in NASCAR’s modern era (since 1972) have ever won four straight races, period, much less to begin a season – but Reddick will also be fighting against a track that has been a bit of a nemesis for him at times over the years.
It was on this very Arizona asphalt, for instance, that Reddick’s lone trip to the Championship 4 came in 2024. He arrived in Phoenix having won his way into the final round two weeks earlier at Homestead-Miami Speedway, thanks to a daring last-lap pass of both Denny Hamlin and Ryan Blaney. Despite a brake issue at Martinsville in the penultimate race of the season, Reddick went into the finale with the best statistical record on ovals of any Champ 4 driver that year, tying Joey Logano for the most wins (two) on that track type and easily leading Blaney, Logano and William Byron in every other key category – including average finish, Adjusted Points+ index and Driver Rating:
If this were a standard oval like Kansas or Las Vegas, Reddick would have been in excellent shape to win his first career Cup Series title.
Unfortunately for Reddick, though, Phoenix isn’t your ordinary track. At exactly 1 mile long, it is neither a classic short track nor is it a typical oval – especially with its flat banking, asymmetrical layout and pronounced dogleg down the frontstretch. In truth, it doesn’t really resemble much else on the Cup schedule, save for maybe Gateway and Loudon (two other longer, flatter tracks).
Because of all this, it has been difficult for Reddick to apply his usual oval-racing skills to Phoenix. In that 2024 championship race, he ended up leading zero laps, and he had the fastest lap in the field just 2.2% of the time, his third-smallest share at any oval that season. While he spent every lap running in the top 15, Reddick was ultimately not much of a threat to win the title, finishing a distant fourth among Champ 4 drivers in the season finale.
That disappointment has been a recurring theme in the desert. Among all ovals Reddick has raced at in the Cup Series, Phoenix ranks ninth-worst by average Driver Rating, fourth-worst by average Adjusted Points+ index and tied for third-worst – ahead of only Michigan and Fontana – by average finish:
Even at Michigan – a much longer, faster and more horsepower-driven track compared to Phoenix – Reddick has a win, scored in August 2024, though that was his only top 10 ever at the venue. In 12 starts at Phoenix, Reddick has a pair of third-place finishes – none more recent than three years ago, early in his 23XI Racing tenure – and a pair of top 10s (10th in the spring, sixth in the fall) in 2024. The rest of his starts here have seen him place 19th or worse, including 20th in the spring a year ago and 26th in the 2025 season finale.
Given that track record, it’s not going to be easy for Reddick to extend his historic season-opening win streak to four in a row this weekend. But if he does, he would become the first driver to win four straight at any point on the schedule since Jimmie Johnson in his 2007 championship season, in addition to joining Christopher Bell last year (plus David Pearson and Mark Martin) as the fourth modern-era driver to win consecutive races at three different track types – in this case, a superspeedway, a road course and an oval. Heck, he would also be able to say he gave Michael Jordan the first “four-peat” of his sporting career.
And why not? In a season that has already defied belief several times over, the next epic trial waits in the Arizona desert. And if Reddick can finally conquer Phoenix, his story only grows taller.