NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 15, 2026

Tyler Reddick

Frontstretch Quotes

An Interview with:

Q. Who are you FaceTiming?

TYLER REDDICK: Frank Monsenor [phonetic]. He's normally our tire guy. Liz filled in for him. He's at home fighting some stuff. He wouldn't miss the race for anything. I asked him to stay home and get healed up for the season. Of course he missed it, but it was really cool to be able to talk to him.

Q. Tyler, last year, what a year for you. I know you were disappointed. I know you had things going on with your baby boy physically. The team and NASCAR, to get here right now in this moment, you're a Daytona 500 champion.

TYLER REDDICK: I know. Last year was really hard for all of us, hard for me. When you're a Cup driver and you get to this level and drive for Michael Jordan, it's expected you win every single year.

For us to go on that drought we did made us look hard in the mirror, and really proud of everyone on our Chumba Casino Toyota Camry. Worked really hard in the off-season, and there was many points in this race where we weren't making decisions we wanted to, but we just reset, and every opportunity we got to reset we went back at it.

Just speechless. I didn't know if I'd ever win this race. It's surreal, honestly. Honestly, the best part is my son asked before this race, Are you finally going to win this race? Something about today just felt right.

Q. Take us through that last lap. You were by yourself, no teammate help around you. Suddenly you were there when it counted most.

TYLER REDDICK: Yeah, I keep looking for my wife and my kids. They'll be here at some point, I'm sure. Maybe they're taking a nap.

Yeah, we had the lead there when that caution came out, lined up next to McDowell, and we just kind of kept getting hung a couple times in the closing laps there. Yeah, just every time we'd kind of break up, there would be nowhere left to go but to push, and they pushed me, obviously.

My teammate Riley Herbst gave me a lot of pushes there and then tried to win the race for himself, as he should at the end there. Just incredible how it all played out. Just true Daytona madness.

It's going to be a long night if I've already lost my voice from screaming. Never thought I'd be Daytona 500 champion.