Tyler Reddick responds to NASCAR fans accusing No. 45 team of having ‘down year’ in 2025

Tyler Reddick knows the performances in 2025 have not been what they were last season when we won the NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship and made the Championship 4. Reddick, however, does not see his 2025 campaign as a massive fall-off from the year prior.

Reddick remains winless through 30 races this season, though other numbers tell a different story. He is fifth in passing, ninth in defense, sixth in speed and fifth in restarts. The issue, Reddick said Monday, is putting together clean races. Reddick’s pit crew is notably ranked 19th in the series.

“I think when you really look at the details of it, it is not an improvement over last year, yes. Yeah, we haven’t performed quite like what we did last year. But it’s not like to an astronomical level,” Reddick said on the Door Bumper Clear podcast. “When you don’t execute, when you don’t have a clean race, you’re not going to have the opportunity to win races, and you’re not going to get those top 10s and top 5s that you’re able to get when you have those clean days. I think when I was looking at it last, we scored like 50 or 60 less points than we did last year. It just shows the top teams have had cleaner years.

“When you look at where we’re at, where we run and what our speed is compared to the field, I think last year we were the fastest car looking at the numbers you wanna look at. The last time I looked at it, we were top two or top three. Maybe that’s changed a little bit over the last couple weeks. It doesn’t take much in this Next Gen era, if you will, to go from contending for race wins every week to struggling to finish 10th.”

Tyler Reddick: ‘I don’t do this just to run 10th’

Reddick has led just 156 laps this season, tallying 10 top 10s and six top 5s. His 23XI Racing No. 45 team missed the mark in this past Sunday’s Round of 12 opener at New Hampshire. Reddick qualified fourth but finished 21st, his fifth finish outside the top 10 in the last six races.

Reddick sits 11th in the playoff standings heading into this Sunday’s race at Kansas Speedway, -23 below the cutline. The goal, as it always is, is to head to the racetrack with the mindset of getting to Victory Lane. That mindset applies to everyone at 23XI, he said.

“I know [23XI co-owner] Michael [Jordan] feels this way, I know a lot of people at 23XI feel this way — we don’t show up just to run 10th. I don’t do this just to run 10th; I show up to make a difference and take a car that’s capable of winning and get it to Victory Lane,” Reddick said. “We have days just get away when we’re capable of winning [and] it’s frustrating, for sure.”