Who Is Tyler Reddick? Daytona 500 Winner on Texting Michael Jordan, Picking Baby Names

Daytona International Speedway (Daytona Beach, Fla.) — A lot can change on one eventful Sunday. Tyler Reddick, a 30-year-old Californian, is now a Daytona 500 winner following a roller-coaster few years — on and off the track. Entering his seventh year of Cup racing, Reddick won back-to-back titles in what is now the O’Reilly Series — and did it for two different teams (JR Motorsports and Richard Childress Racing). Reddick is married to Alexa DeLeon — daughter of Jose DeLeon, who spent 13 years as a pitcher in the major leagues — and they have two children: Beau (6) and Rookie (15 months). Last fall, Rookie needed surgery to remove a kidney, where a tumor was pressing up against an artery, causing signs of heart failure. Reddick, driver of the No. 45 car for Michael Jordan-owned 23XI Racing, won the regular-season Cup title in 2024 and then went winless in 2025. Now coming off the biggest win of his career, he sat down with me Monday morning before flying to New York City to embark on the Daytona 500 winner media tour: Who is Tyler Reddick? Tyler Reddick is a Northern California kid born and raised, grew up dirt racing on the short tracks and outlaw carts, and he was a dirt racer that ran dirt for well over 10 years before he ever got his first opportunity racing asphalt. And of course, it was very fitting that I got my opportunity from a fellow dirt racer himself in his roots in Ken Schrader and getting to drive asphalt for the first time with him [and his ARCA team]. A dirt kid that got an opportunity from one of the greats in our sport and led to me paving my way, if you will, up the NASCAR ranks. How would your wife describe you? Father. Impatient sometimes. I’m a bit all over the place, meaning if I don’t have something to do or something going on during the day, I can be a lot to deal with sometimes. But thankfully, I have a good schedule that kind of keeps me regimented. I’m definitely the type that it’s hard for me to sit still, I think my wife would say, I’m a great father, great husband, and we work really hard to be able to share these moments together as a family. It’s important to us. [INSIDE THE WIN: How 23XI Hopes to Build on Historic Daytona 500 Win] Well, if you don’t like to sit still, and you have two young kids who probably don’t sit still, you’re fine, right? Perfect. So do you handle that part of it well? Most of the time. When I’m sleepy, I’m not great at it, but you adjust, you adapt as your family grows as things change. Things are on that side are going well. On the great days, it’s awesome to celebrate with your family. And I’ve learned to on the bad days, it’s also great because when you get to when you get back to the bus or go to the plane or you get home after the race when they stayed home, they’re able to pick you up from your low spot and bring you back to just being dad outside of the car. So in a lot of ways, it’s a positive boost on the good and bad days. Do people ask you often why you named your kid Rookie? A couple of people have. Reason is Alexa’s grandpa. Alexa’s nickname growing up, she was his little Rookie. They watched a lot of baseball growing up together. Her dad obviously played, and her grandfather loves baseball. Her grandfather’s a huge, huge baseball fan. We enjoyed kind of going off the path a little bit with Beau, but it seems like there’s a lot of Beaus running around nowadays. But at the time, it felt like it was a name that was just not common, and think for all the right reasons, of all the names we were kind of throwing around, the one that I liked the most, that she loved, was Rookie. And my son, Beau, loved it too. So it just, it just fits. Right now, when he’s being cute, Rookie’s a little cookie. And when he gets a little bit older and starts running around and being rough on stuff, he’ll be a Rookie in that sense, too. So it’s very funny how when your child is born, you don’t know what they’re going to grow up to be or who they’re going to turn into. They’re obviously yours, but they somehow just live up to their name. Beau is a Beau, and Rookie is just, he’s Rookie, like just the name fits for whatever reason. Were you in a dark place last year? I think so. Any time for me that I go a couple weeks without winning, I feel that I never would have, in my worst nightmare, wrote up that I would go here without winning. But it became reality for me. And once that happens, it’s like man, was Homestead [in 2024] my last win? It’s a possibility I may never win again. It hits you. It really does. Sometimes that’s just how it happens. One day you just don’t win again. And is that it? And thankfully for me, I’ve at least won one more. I don’t think I’m by any means done winning, but when you go on spells like that when it’s just nothing seems to fall into place, nothing goes right. It’s a lot to deal with. You have big expectations for yourself with owners like Denny Hamlin, Michael Jordan and your team. We expect each other to go out and compete for championships, to win races like the Daytona 500 and win races in general. So last year was a tough year for us, but I feel like we came into 2026 in a better place because of the hard times we went through. And then there was probably a time when Rookie had his kidney tumor where you didn’t care whether you were winning or not last year? That is fair. When I was in the car, I still wanted to win. I cared about that. But certainly, it was very different. I was in a place where that priority was being home, was being at the hospital with Rookie, and if things fell in the right place with what he had going on, and he was going to be stable enough for a few days for me to go race, it essentially fell into place every week for me to go to the racetrack. And going into it, it didn’t look like it was going to go that way. It was very realistic that when I got home from Kansas [in the middle of the playoffs], I wasn’t going to get back in the car again. Things just kind of fell where I could be at the hospital all week, and then I could hop on a plane with Coach [Joe Gibbs] or Denny, whoever it was, and get to the track the last minute, then get in the car and go racing, get in the car at the airport when I got home, and go straight back to the hospital. When I was still in the car during those times, I wanted to win really bad for a number of reasons. But, it was weird where I had no desire, nothing to go to [our shop] Airspeed, to work, or put anything into racing. It was when I was home and when my family needed me was where I needed to be. Do you ever second-guess a text or question a text you would send to Michael Jordan? It’s important to be myself. But, yes, I do find myself when I text my bosses to make sure I proofread it once, twice, maybe three times before I send it. Not when I’m texting my mom or my dad or my wife. [INSIDE THE CELEBRATION: Michael Jordan: ‘Feels Like I Won a Championship’] But Michael isn’t intimidating to text? I had a spell where I was really bad about texting anybody back. I realized I was in a bad spot when he texted me, and I thought I responded, and I saw him a week later, and he’s like, “Thanks for the text back.” And everyone just started laughing because I don’t think I was texting anybody back during that time. We do go back and forth [on text]. A lot of times he’s telling me good job or trying to pump me up after a rough race. I would consider you a little bit more of a free spirit than some of the other drivers. Is that the California in you? Or is that the Scott Bloomquist, Ken Schrader training? It’s a little bit of everything where I grew up in Northern California on a lot of farmland where I live, we lived on a lot of acres, and I’d just always go out and explore. So I definitely feel like my roots were a bit more country and off the beaten path where I was born and raised. Just the more I grew up, the more I kind of branched into who I am. I feel like there’s a time and a place to be serious, but I think it’s super important to have fun doing what you’re doing. So I tried to keep it the serious moments, be focused, but keep it as light-hearted as possible. Because you dedicate your whole life to this. It’s important that you have fun, you do it with people that you love and care about as well. Would it be fair to say on the competition side, it took a while to find that balance? It really did. There was a period in time there where I thought, the more crazy I act, the higher my odds of winning go up for whatever reason. Some of that’s balanced out for sure. And when you get married, when you have kids, you kind of have to grow up at some point,too. It’s all helped balance it out. I still have my crazy side. I just show my crazy side when I play with my kids, when we’re having fun, roughhousing, I’m crawling around on the ground with Rookie. What did you learn from Schrader and Bloomquist on the track? I feel like some of the stuff I just talked about with both of them, honestly. They were very passionate about what they did, but they also love what they did and made sure that they had fun doing it. And that was important. I saw a lot out of Scott. I never met someone that worked harder but also played harder too. That’s what it’s about. It’s easy in racing to just let the weight of expectations get you down, and if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing while you’re doing it, if things aren’t going well, it’s really easy to get into a dark place. And so I’ve just always found that working with people that you like and finding ways to have fun while you’re working just helps it all balance out with the length of the season, and when you have a rough stretch, helps you get through it. Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.