AVONDALE, Ariz. — For five months, Tyler Reddick's season was a riddle: the driver who won five of the first nine NASCAR Cup Series races of 2026, including the first three, had not won since April. On Sunday at Phoenix Raceway he ended the drought in the most consequential way possible, winning the Freeway Insurance 500 on a late restart while the championship leader wrecked — and turning the final three races of the season into a genuine fight.
Reddick's No. 45 Toyota for 23XI Racing started sixth and spent much of the afternoon chipping away at its balance, as he put it afterward, rather than dominating. The race was decided in its final half-hour. With 29 laps to go, points leader Kyle Larson blew a tire entering Turn 1 and slammed into the outside wall, bringing out the caution. Under it, Reddick's team chose two fresh tires while others, including Chase Briscoe, stayed out and cycled to the front. When green-flag racing resumed with 19 laps left, Reddick did not get a perfect launch — then saw a gap exiting Turn 2, shot through the middle between Ty Gibbs and Chase Elliott in a brief moment of four-wide racing with Ryan Blaney at the bottom, cleared for second, and used the fresher tires to run Briscoe down, diving low through Turn 3 and clearing him for the lead with 17 laps to go.
From there he held off a late surge from pole-sitter Blaney to the checkered flag. After a burnout, Reddick slammed both hands on the roof of his car, climbed atop it with his fists raised, and then climbed the fence to the fans. “For us, this group never lost the motivation, never lost the drive. Just something about today, I had a really good feeling,” Reddick said. “I just got really fortunate.” Later he added: “Today was very frustrating at times, but everyone kind of kept their heads in it. We just kept chipping away with the balance on our car. Put us in a spot to be able to capitalize in the end.” It was his sixth win of the year and his first at Phoenix.
Larson's disastrous day reopens the Chase
Larson had been the most consistent driver of the postseason: top-six finishes in each of the first six Chase races, two of them wins, and a 49-point lead over Denny Hamlin when Sunday began. His Phoenix unraveled in stages. He qualified 22nd, scored no points in either of the first two stages, and was running deep in the field when the tire let go with 28 laps to go. His Hendrick Motorsports crew tried to repair the No. 5 Chevrolet and could not get it back on track: a DNF, his fourth of the season.
“We never found the improvements we needed, so that was a bummer,” Larson said. “I didn't expect to be good, but I didn't expect to be that bad either. It wasn't a lot of fun today, but we were just trying to salvage what we could of the day.” The salvage operation left him still leading the standings — barely. Christopher Bell, who finished fourth on Sunday, now trails Larson by just five points. Behind them: Briscoe at minus-24, Hamlin at minus-31, Blaney at minus-40, Joey Logano at minus-44 and Reddick at minus-56. Every Chase driver gained on Larson at Phoenix, and USA Today's account noted that each of the top seven still controls his own championship destiny with three races left, however unlikely a sweep would be. Reddick alone gained 58 points on the leader in one afternoon.
Hamlin's missed opportunity, Wallace's what-if
The strangest day belonged to Hamlin, who won the race as a co-owner of 23XI Racing and lost ground as a driver on the very day Larson failed to finish. Running fourth with 91 laps to go, Hamlin blew a right-rear tire, reached pit road without wrecking, and was then penalized for speeding on pit road. His No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing never recovered; he finished 28th, the first time in 31 races he had not finished on the lead lap. “Definitely not ideal,” Hamlin said. “But, yeah, what can you do? I feel like we just need — when we got a good car, like the second half of the race today — to finish well. We just haven't finished.” He leaves Phoenix fourth, 31 points back, when a clean day could have put him in the lead.
Bubba Wallace supplied the other what-if. Wallace won the race off pit road under the caution for Hamlin's tire, led 52 laps, and was still in front when Larson wrecked. A rough final pit stop and a speeding penalty of his own dropped him to a 17th-place finish. Logano, who swept the first two stages and finished sixth, was blunt about the reshaped picture: “I don't feel like much of a long shot anymore,” said Logano, now 44 points behind Larson.
The finish, and the road from here
Behind Reddick and Blaney, Chase Elliott finished third — his first top-five in more than two months — Bell was fourth, and part-time 23XI driver Corey Heim, starting 36th, came home fifth. Logano, Daniel Suarez, Briscoe, Ross Chastain and Ty Gibbs completed the top 10.
Three races remain in the 2026 season, and the next one could scramble everything again: the Cup Series goes to Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, October 25, the most unpredictable track on the circuit, where Larson did not finish in the spring. Martinsville and Homestead close the schedule. A points race that looked settled a week ago is now five points wide at the top with seven drivers within 56 — because, on one Sunday in the desert, the hottest starter of the spring rediscovered winning at exactly the moment the points leader found the wall. Follow our motorsport coverage through the final three races.
