AVONDALE, Ariz. — Tyler Reddick needs no pep talk or motivation when it comes to trying to win his first NASCAR Cup Series title.
He drives for Michael Jordan, after all, and the basketball legend earned six NBA championships in his unwavering desire for excellence at all times. Now in his fourth year of team ownership with 23XI Racing, Jordan has a shot at winning his first Cup Series title, too, in the season finale Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 winner who started the team with Jordan in 2021 and then brought Reddick to the lineup in 2023 (replacing Kurt Busch in the second car that was added in 2022), said the University of North Carolina and Chicago Bulls great has really only spoken up once in a team briefing, doing so last year to emphasize how champions operate.
“I think there has been one specific competition meeting that he said he wanted to participate in,” Hamlin said of Jordan. “He listened to it and listened to it, and at the end, he gave his opinion on what he heard, and he didn’t like what he heard and he gave some pointed remarks on what championship teams sound like and what winning teams sound like and how we need to change the way we are communicating and the way we are shifting blame all over the place.
“That was kind of a pivotal moment for our team and our drivers to hear, and taking responsibility for each person’s shortcomings and how you are going to get better, and that was a big moment in shifting our team’s mentality.”
It’s only because Jordan cares so desperately about both winning, just as he always did on the basketball court, and his still-new venture as a NASCAR team owner. He’s currently part of a two-team federal antitrust lawsuit (Front Row Motorsports is the other party involved) against NASCAR and chairman Jim France over the current revenue-sharing model for Cup Series teams.
“The racing side of it brings out more emotion and passion than I’ve seen outside of his own career in sport,” Hamlin said. “I’ve seen him on golf courses, I’ve seen him play cards, things like that — I’ve seen all of that. But nothing matches the emotion that winning a NASCAR race has shown in him.
“I think he’s spoken quite a bit about how this fills his cup — this fills his competition cup that he has been missing for such a long time. That’s good for everyone, and certainly great for our team to have Michael support them the way that he has.”
The 1o-race playoffs started in September with 16 contenders, but that field is down to just four, and the highest-finishing driver from that quartet on Sunday will win the season championship.
The 28-year-old Reddick, behind the wheel of the No. 45 Toyota, is one of the final four for the first time, while William Byron in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 Chevrolet has made it that far for the second consecutive season. The other two contenders are in Team Penske Fords as Ryan Blaney tries to repeat as champion and Joey Logano tries to become the only active driver with three Cup Series championships, having won titles in 2018 and 2022.
Reddick seemed to be the most tense of the four contenders during media day this past week ahead of the final. It didn’t help when he was the slowest of the four in Friday practice and then qualified 10th Saturday. That was ahead of Blaney, who qualified 17th, but behind Logano, who will start second, and Byron, who will be eighth in the lineup.
JGR’s Martin Truex Jr., the 2017 champ who will race for the final time before retiring from full-time Cup Series competition, will start in pole position after qualifying at 134.741 mph on the 1-mile oval Saturday.
“I know it’s championship weekend — I don’t know what the right word is — I’d say I’m calm, focused. There’s a lot on the line certainly,” said Reddick, who had yet to receive an expected pep talk from Jordan.
“I know we’ll catch up between now and when we strap in the car. Obviously we’re here now. A lot of the preparation is done. There’s still a good bit of time, so plenty of time to think about little things. But largely I think a lot of the preparation is done, the car is loaded. I feel good about what we’ve done getting ready for this weekend.”
His tone was the complete opposite of Blaney and Logano, who have a shot at giving team owner Roger Penske a third consecutive Cup Series championship. Penske is rolling into Phoenix fresh off last weekend’s World Endurance Championship in sports car competition and another sports car title in IMSA.
Blaney is trying to become the first driver to win back-to-back titles since former Hendrick star Jimmie Johnson won five straight from 2006-10.
Logano only made it to the final four when he was reinstated to the playoffs after initially being eliminated in the second round. He earned the spot back when Hendrick’s Alex Bowman failed inspection after a race.
“I’ve always thought internally to myself, I sit around, ‘How do you make Roger proud?'” Blaney said. “That’s my only goal in my racing life for the last 12 years, is how do I make Roger proud, because he’s given me my life. Bluntly, at the end of the day, it’s win races and win championships, bring him things that he hasn’t done before. It’s a very small list of things that he hasn’t done in motorsports.
“We have a chance to do it for him. It’s just great to be in a position to where we can do it, have two cars that can do it. There always is pressure because this is a big moment. But pressure is fine. It means you care when you feel pressure and you’re anxious about things. It means you give a crap about what you’re doing. It’s how do you respond to that and how do you kind of use it to drive you. It would be great to add another one. It would be a heck of an end of the year for RP.”
Byron’s inclusion in the final four is somewhat shrouded in controversy. NASCAR punished fellow Chevrolet drivers Ross Chastain and Austin Dillon for manipulating last week’s playoff race at Martinsville Speedway to ensure Byron earned the final spot on points over JGR’s Christopher Bell.
Bell complained Saturday he was cheated out of a shot at the championship, but NASCAR has insisted the four drivers are all deserving.
Rudy Fugle, Byron’s crew chief, defended his driver’s position in the finale, noting he won three races this year, including the season-opening Daytona 500.
“Only a couple have more than that,” Fugle said. “Scored more points than anybody else in the playoffs. I feel like our team is peaking at the right time. I think we’re competition and well deserving to go race for a championship on Sunday.”