I know, I know. I’m the one who always tells you not to make conclusions early in the season. But Tyler Reddick’s 2026 season is already exceptional enough to celebrate.
You can’t look at his numbers in terms of the first nine races of the season. For example, he’s won five of the nine races this season, giving him a win rate of 55.6%. That’s like a batting average of .556. And it’s really not fair to compare the first nine races in one season with the first nine races in another, very different season because there’s been so much change in scheduling over the years.
It’s possible that the rest of his season could go terribly off the rails. He might not win another race.
That doesn’t matter. Reddick’s 2026 season is already exceptional, even if he doesn’t win another race. He’s already reached the upper echelon of season wins in the Gen-7 era.
Tyler Reddick’s 2026 Season: Wins
Wins are important, even though Kyle Larson is making a good argument for consistency. So let’s look first at where Reddick’s 2026 season ranks relative to other Gen-7 seasons, and then at his performance relative to other stage-racing seasons.
In the Gen-7 Car
In the five years of the Gen-7 car (2022 to present), no driver has won more than six races in a season.
- William Byron accomplished it in 2023
- Kyle Larson in 2024
- Denny Hamlin in 2025.
Interestingly, Larson and Hamlin ran only 35 of the 36 races in the seasons cited.
Reddick is one win away from joining that group. He’s only two wins away from setting a record for most wins in a season in the Gen-7 car — with 27 races left.
But even if Reddick doesn’t win another race, he’s still part of an elite group. Only three drivers have won five races in a Gen-7 season. Those drivers would be
- Chase Elliott (2022)
- Shane van Gisbergen (2025)
- Tyler Reddick (2026)
Like Elliott, Reddick’s wins have come at a variety of different track types, proving he’s versatile as well as fast.
In the Stage Racing Era
Let’s expand our purview and include seasons from 2017 – present. Kyle Larson holds the record for most wins in a stage-racing season. He won 10 races in 2021, the year of his first championship. So Reddick is already half way to that record — again, with 27 races left.
After Larson, we have:
- Nine wins: Kevin Harvick in 2020
- Eight wins: Kyle Busch in 2018 and Harvick in 2018
- Seven wins: Hamlin (2020) and Martin Truex Jr. (2017)
- Six wins: Byron (2023 and 2019), Hamlin (2025 and 2019), and Larson (2024)
- Five wins: van Gisbergen (2025), Elliott (2022 and 2020), Busch (2019, 2017) and Reddick (2026)
But It’s Not Just Wins
Reddick currently has a top-five rate of 66.7%. He has not finished out of the top 15 in any race this season, including at two pack-racing tracks. If he flames out at Talladega, that only decreases his top-five rate to 60%.
Reddick’s current average finish stands at 5.0, with a median finish of 1. The chart below shows the average finishes for the 11 drivers with average finishes under 15.
I think a plot shows the differences a little more clearly. Reddick’s average finish is almost half that of Hamlin’s.
In addition to Reddick, only Hamlin has an average finish under 10.0. Only Keselowski and Reddick haven’t had any finishes below P20.
Despite Toyota dominating wins, manufacturer representation among the drivers with the best average finishes is pretty evenly split. Three of the four Hendrick Motorsports cars (27.3%) represent Chevy. The remaining eight cars are equally split between Fords and Toyotas.
At the same point last year, only eight drivers had average finishes under 15. Byron had the best average finish at 9.11. Reddick’s average finish in 2025 was 12.4, with a best finish of second.
Reddick went winless last year. That’s how fast things change in NASCAR.
But Points!
With the new scoring metric, finish positions aren’t as important as points earned for everyone except the winner. The graph below shows total points thus far in the 2026 season.
Reddick’s five wins earned him 75 additional points with the new scoring system. He’s currently 105 points higher than second-place Hamlin, so it’s not just the wins propelling him to such a lead. To emphasize the importance of points:
- The gap from first to second is 105 points
- The gap from Hamlin in P2 to 11th-place Chris Buescher is 93 points.
- The gap from Hamlin to 12th place Carson Hocevar is 115 points.
The gap from P1 to P2 is comparable to the gap from P2 to P12.
The additional 15 points for winning add 540 points over the entire season. When one (or two) drivers dominate the wins, it forces everyone else closer together. Even if a second driver gets on a hot streak, having a small number of multiple-time winners makes the battle that much tighter for the rest of field.
The other four race winners (Hamlin, Blaney, Gibbs and Elliott), plus Larson, are the only drivers in the 300-400 point range. For all the talk about Larson not having won, he’s certainly holding his own thanks to stage points.
Ten drivers sit in the 200-point range, with just 16 points separating the five drivers from P6 from P10.
Can Reddick Keep Going?
Will Reddick’s 2026 season go down as one of the best in Gen-7 history? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
The chassis-setup fairy may visit Chad Knaus and give him the missing piece to finding balance with their new body. The No. 22 team might find a missing minus sign or decimal point that’s been messing up their year. Reddick may cross the path of a black cat under a ladder on a Friday the 13th.
One of the women in my writing group admitted that she looks at the ending of a book before reading it because she doesn’t want to waste time reading it, only to be disappointed by the ending. For me, it’s about the journey, not the result. If the stats people could accurately predict the outcome of a season, why watch?
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