'We got a lot of the wrecks we needed': Tyler Reddick reflects on his runner’s up finish in the Daytona 500

Tyler Reddick, the 23XI racing driver, delivered one of the most standout performances in the 2025 Great American race. The driver started the season with an impressive second-place finish after a chaotic final lap where the front leaders got involved in a dramatic crash.

Denny Hamlin, who was leading the race and was on track, quite literally, to his fourth Daytona 500 victory ended up losing control of his vehicle after a fierce battle with the Team Penske driver, Austin Cindric. This resulted in the “big one”, a chain reaction that involved multiple drivers including Cole Custer, Cody Ware, Ty Gibbs, and Alex Bowman. Custer drove into Hamlin and it changed the podium of the Great American race. Reddick, who was in 13th place before the “big one” made his way through the wreck to land himself his best finish at the event. Reddick improved his previous finish of 27th which he achieved in his debut season at the Daytona 500 in 2019.

After his best finish ever, the driver made it clear that he was lucky to finish second because of the major wreck but was unhappy with his starting position. He spoke to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio:

"Many times we've come down here and shown speed and shown all the things that we need to do to have a really good weekend. But yeah, we just unfortunately didn't have the track position we needed to have a fair shot at the end. But we got a lot of the wrecks that we needed to survive and kind of get through."

The 29-year-old elaborated that it was a race of fine margins and things can change very quickly:

"And man, just a split second here or there difference with 11 clipping us may have been what we needed to have a shot at the 24."

William Byron secured his second consecutive Daytona 500 victory holding off Tyler Reddick. The race had been fairly clean until its closing stages, with Joey Logano winning Stage one and Ryan Blaney taking Stage two.

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23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick made his feelings known after being “close to stealing” the Daytona 500 win

Reddick expressed mixed feelings about his second-place result, acknowledging that it was a significant improvement compared to his previous Daytona 500 performances. On X, the 29-year-old shared a post:

"We were this close to stealing it! 🤏🏻"

"If we were up there controlling that race and lost it at the end, it would sting a lot more," Reddick was quoted as saying by Race Face TV. "We basically got two major breaks and snuck through two big stackups. Without those, we finish somewhere around 20th."

"You would have to go back 60 laps, just decisions made leading up to that final stretch – not really in the closing laps. We got the most out of it that we could," he added.

As a result of his strong showing at Daytona, Reddick now sits fourth in the NASCAR Cup Series standings, just seven points behind the leader, Ryan Blaney.