This Sunday, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick will race for the highest honor in NASCAR: the Cup Series championship. He’s one of four drivers — along with Joey Logano, William Byron, and defending champion Ryan Blaney — who survived every elimination in the NASCAR playoffs, and now, one race remains. The highest finisher among those four after 312 laps at Phoenix Raceway wins the championship, whether they win the 40-car race or not.
A vital part of Reddick’s championship bid is his race team. The crews working on his No. 45 car and teammate Bubba Wallace’s No. 23 all have the same goal: win the title for 23XI.
“I would say 90% of our weekend is focused on making sure they're getting everything that they need,” JR Houston, an engineer on Wallace’s car, told Motorsport. “If we find something that makes the car faster, we tell them about it, then we both get faster. If they get everything they need, we are going to perform well, and vice versa.”
Teamwork has been a hot topic at Phoenix this weekend, since all four drivers racing for the championship have teammates who aren’t. That lets the playoff and non-playoff cars on each team try out car setups and driving techniques to see which ones work best, which is critical when one race decides the title.
While cars on some NASCAR teams operate more individually all year, Houston said 23XI works in lockstep. The team brings similar cars to the track for both drivers, so feedback on car setup and driving technique can benefit both. That mattered already this weekend, when Wallace ran the 11th-best time in practice and Reddick ran 21st — behind the other three championship contenders. Blaney’s No. 12 car led the session.
“In practice, Bubba was a little more comfortable with the car,” Houston said. “We debriefed for an hour about how the cars felt different, and because they're so similar, we know that it's the drivers making the difference. By being similar, we can teach each other.”
Teamwork makes the dream work?
This weekend, there’s an extra layer of help: Denny Hamlin, co-owner of 23XI and driver of the No. 11 car for fellow Toyota team Joe Gibbs Racing. Hamlin made the penultimate round of the playoffs, but got eliminated last weekend when the field went from eight drivers to four.
That makes Reddick the only Toyota left in the championship, and his crew chief, Billy Scott, said Hamlin’s help made the night between practice and qualifying “very productive.”
“We rely heavily on our teammates,” Scott said. “That's both with us having Bubba here at 23XI, and with all the JGR cars. The 11 came with a setup like ours to give us even more information, and to have another driver with direct feedback of what the car drove like to discuss with Tyler.”
The time between practice and qualifying included debriefs, discussions about how to adjust car setups, and looking at data from 23XI and the rest of the field. NASCAR teams use a data system called SMT to analyze the speed, revs, shifting, braking, throttle, steering, delta time, and driving line run by any car in the field, shown in both graphs and animations. That means Reddick’s team can see where other cars are gaining and losing time on the No. 45, and any other team can do the same to them.
“We’re certainly looking at everybody on SMT,” Scott said. “We’re trying to understand where people's balance is, what line they're running, et cetera. But when you have cars that have the same setup — or at least with the other JGR cars, you know what their setup is — that's a huge benefit.”
Houston said the 23XI teams didn’t double down on car adjustments this weekend, in the name of efficiency. If each car gets different adjustments from the same baseline, the team can see what works and what doesn’t.
Scott said every weekend, 23XI is focused on being fast as soon as they unload the cars. They prep ahead of time by studying old notes and experimenting virtually on the simulator.
“These cars, honestly, are so hard to make changes on,” Scott said. “They're so time-consuming that you are kind of limiting yourself on what you can do, so you don't get too far off of your baseline.”
Part of Houston’s job is coaching drivers on what to expect at each track, so if needed, they’re prepared to adapt their driving style quickly. That way, if they get to the track and “somebody's driving a different way, it's not so out of the ordinary for them to try it.” If they try and it doesn’t work, that helps inform setup changes.
“If we say ‘You need to do this,’ they understand what we mean,” Houston said. “We don't have to give a soliloquy on how to drive the car. They already know, ‘Oh, he’s doing this. I need my car to do X, Y, or Z in order to be able to do what he's doing.’
“Engineers are working on how to make Tyler drive more like Bubba, or Bubba more like Tyler. We’re doing different things to find speed: looking at the SMT data, looking at how [Blaney] is really fast. How's he doing it? We can't make our car like theirs, but we can certainly try and drive like they're driving and see if there's fruit there.”
Test, talk, adjust, practice, race…
The debrief after practice helped 23XI. The next day, Reddick qualified 10th — the third of four playoff cars, but still near the front of the field. Logano qualified second, Byron eighth, and Blaney 17th.
“We know what we need to work on, and we’ve been talking about it and coming up with a plan for Sunday,” Reddick told the media after qualifying. “Going into the race, I have a good sense of what I need to be focused on, and how we as a team need to keep up with the race car. But obviously, we have to wait and see how the race goes.”
Even with a championship on the line for Reddick, Houston has to focus on making Wallace and the No. 23 car as fast as possible. That’s because, he said: “It’s really hard to help the 45 on the racetrack, or with anything of value, if you're slow.”
“The primary goal is winning the championship for 23XI,” Houston said. “I think people on both teams understand that, so it's really easy to go up into the front of the hauler and just have conversations about what's going to make everybody better.
“For 35 weeks this year, we've gone to the racetrack extremely similar and used each other's feedback to change the cars from practice to race. So [this weekend], when it matters more, it's not like we're adding pressure on ourselves or adding any sort of new procedure. It's a weekly thing for us. We just do what we've been doing.”
