Freeway Insurance 500: Reddick wins Phoenix, gains late-season momentum

AVONDALE, Ariz. — 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick used a two-tire strategy call from crew chief Billy Scott on the final restart with 30 laps to go, putting the No. 45 Rockstar Energy Drink Toyota in position to win the Freeway Insurance 500 at Phoenix Raceway.

The 30-year-old native of Corning, California, spent most of the 312-lap race running just inside the top 10 and capitalized on championship leader Kyle Larson’s flat tire, which brought out the race’s final caution. Reddick, who won five of the first nine NASCAR Cup Series races this year, earned his sixth win of the 2026 season at the 1-mile Arizona track.

Now, Reddick leaves the desert 56 points out of the championship points lead.

“That’s way too long,” Reddick said about not winning since April. “Man, the way we worked there, I mean, thinking of Phoenix, we wanted to be a lot better when we came back here. I think we checked that box. For us, this group never lost motivation, never lost the drive to keep searching and keep trying to find ways to make ourselves better, just be an all-around better team. I don’t know, something about today. It didn’t really start right. Just something about today, I had a really good feeling. Practice was amazing. Yeah, we’re back to Victory Lane. First victory for Rockstar Energy, too.”

Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney was the favorite for most of the race weekend after previously winning the last two Phoenix races. Blaney was fastest in practice, started on pole and led 51of 312 laps en route to a runner-up finish.

“At the very end I started closing in,” Blaney said. “I wish I would have found the top of three and four a little earlier. That seemed to be working pretty good, but he just got away a little bit there. It took me a second to get to second, but then we kind of stabilized for a long time and at the very end I started to make a little ground, but it was just a little bit too late. Overall, I’m proud of the effort and it was a really good day of them sticking with it and getting better through the day. I thought the first run of the race we were good and then kind of lost a little bit there in Stage 2, but we progressively got better in Stage 3. That’s something to be proud of there.”

Hendrick Motorsports driver Chase Elliott finished third after a strategy call from crew chief Alan Gustafson to stay out when the final caution came out, which played tremendously into their favor. Elliott’s third-place finish was his first top five since Richmond over two months ago.

“Honestly, I was really surprised,” Elliott said. “I thought more people would stay out. I’m curious to see if those guys had scuffs, or if they had already burnt their scuffs earlier and had stickers on. In our situation, the call was going to be two tires and they were going to be two scuffs. That didn’t really do a whole lot for me in my head at that point in time. I thought that maybe if we could get a couple rows of a buffer, we’d be okay. But I’m really proud of this No. 9 Kelley Blue Book Chevrolet team for putting together a solid day. It’s been a while since we’ve had one, so that was nice. We made some legitimate improvements, I thought, which was encouraging.”

Results from the 2026 Freeway Insurance 500 at Phoenix Raceway are listed below:

Other Race Facts

Toyota clinched the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series Manufacturers’ Championship after the Freeway Insurance 500 at Phoenix Raceway. This is the fourth time in history that Toyota won the Manufacturers’ title.

“Our team members at TRD, along with our partners at 23XI Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing and Legacy Motor Club, have delivered at the highest level all season,” said TRD USA President Tyler Gibbs. “This is a very important title for Toyota and TRD because it represents the teamwork, effort and passion of countless people across our organization and throughout our teams. We couldn’t be more pleased to have that work pay off with our fourth manufacturers’ title.”

Kyle Larson had one of his worst on-track performances in recent memory, as his championship lead fell from 49 to just five points. The Hendrick Motorsports driver was off pace for most of the race before a flat tire with 30 laps to go took him out of contention,

In fact, Larson, who started the first five races of the Cup Series Chase with five top-six finishes, only ran inside the top 15 for 19 of his 281 laps completed.

“This No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet wasn’t going to quit today,” Larson said. “We never found the improvements we needed, so that was a bummer. 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. We’ll go to Talladega (Superspeedway) and try to forget about today and get back after it. We’ve done well at the superspeedways, so hopefully we can execute, get some points and keep ourselves in the hunt.”

Denny Hamlin also had things go wrong for him in the race that would have been his best chance to cut the points deficit to Larson. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver suffered a flat tire, and a caution came out while he was one lap down on pit road. Unfortunately for Hamlin, he was unable to wave around or get the free pass because he was caught speeding on pit road.

From there, Hamlin spent the rest of the race one lap down and never recovered. His 28th-place finish was the first race he finished off the lead lap since the season-opening Daytona 500, ending a streak of 31 straight finishes on the lead lap.

23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace seemed in prime position to steal a win before the late-race Larson caution. Wallace led 52 of 312 laps and came off pit road as the first driver with four fresh tires, before getting busted for speeding and having to restart in 27th. Wallace ended up 17th.

Front Row Motorsports had all three cars finish inside the top 15 for the second time in team history (2026 Talladega spring race).

JGR driver Christopher Bell finished fourth, with another strong day putting him within five points of the championship points lead. Bell also led a race-high 85 of 312 laps.

“It’s going to be a battle, that’s for sure,” Bell said. “We’re right there in it. Really proud of our team. They’ve been doing a really good job of bringing fast race cars, executing races. We’ve been able to qualify well and run up front in stages. I felt like our performance probably tapered off a little bit as the day went on. We had the strategy to put tires there at the end, had good restarts to get some track position. We’re in the hunt.”

23XI driver Corey Heim started 36th and ended up finishing fifth. The 2025 Craftsman Truck Series champion, who is running a part-time Cup schedule this year, was not originally slated to run this event, as it was not part of his original 12-race schedule. With his fifth-place finish, Heim now has two wins, three top fives and nine top 20s.

“Definitely overall a good day,” Heim said. “I grinded for sure. It was tough in Stage 1; I was pretty much trapped back there in dirty air so really couldn’t go anywhere, but knew we had speed. Every time we had clean air a pit cycle happened and I got a little bit of space just to see what I could do, we had a lot of speed compared to the leaders. I’m just really proud of these 23XI guys, Mobil 1, this Camry was really good all day.Two-tiree call there at the end to put us in position to do some damage and I think I was a couple of mistakes away from ending up third there. I felt like my car had a lot of potential. I’m happy with fifth; we qualified almost last, so I will take it.”

Joey Logano swept the stages at Phoenix for the third time in his Cup Series career and the first time since Daytona in August 2020, according to NASCAR Insights. Logano went on to finish sixth after leading 84 of 312 laps.

“It was good and bad, I guess,” Logano said. “The good part is that we were fast and led a bunch of laps and won two stages. The bad part is we gave away a win. That part hurts a little bit, but I guess we made up close to 50 points to the leader, so you can’t be too mad about it. I wish we had it back.”

Chase Briscoe was the only Cup Series driver to spend all 312 laps inside the top 15 running positions. In fact, Briscoe’s lowest running position was ninth, so he never left the top 10. He also had a 100% Quality Pass Rate, according to NASCAR’s box score.

Chase Driver Phoenix Results

• Tyler Reddick (1st)
• Ryan Blaney (2nd)
• Chase Elliott (3rd)
• Christopher Bell (4th)
• Joey Logano (6th)
• Daniel Suárez (7th)
• Chase Briscoe (8th)
• Ty Gibbs (10th)
• Carson Hocevar (12th)
• Bubba Wallace (17th)
• Ryan Preece (18th)
• Austin Cindric (19th)
• William Byron (21st)
• Chris Buescher (22nd)
• Denny Hamlin (28th)
• Kyle Larson (34th)

Chase Standings Post-Phoenix

GRID Ranking

The 2026 GRID Ranking is the 10th year of the world’s premier motorsports ranking system, which was initially released on Sunday, April 5.
The official ranking includes drivers participating in seven racing series (NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, Formula E, WRC, Supercars, MotoGP). Each driver earns GRID Ratings, which help determine their seeding in the GRID Ranking.

DRIVER	OLD RATING	PREVIOUS RANKING	MOST RECENT FINISH	NEW RATING	NEW RANKING
Denny Hamlin	12.86	5th	28th	N/A	N/A
Tyler Reddick	11.98	13th	1st	N/A	N/A
Christopher Bell	11.56	14th	4th	N/A	N/A
Kyle Larson	11.33	15th	34th	N/A	N/A
Chase Briscoe	11.15	18th	8th	N/A	N/A

Week 29 of the GRID Ranking:

*Week 29 of the GRID Ranking will be updated sometime in the next few days.*

The next race on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday, Oct. 25. Coverage begins at 2 p.m. ET on NBC.

GRID Network

GRID Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GridNetworkTV

GRID X: https://x.com/GridNetworkTV

GRID Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/gridnetworktv.bsky.social

GRID TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gridnetworktv

GRID Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/GridNetworkTV

GRID Facebook: https://facebook.com/GridNetworkTV

GRID Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gridnetworktv/

GRID YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GRIDNetworkTV