Daytona 500: Champion Tyler Reddick, Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin praise Riley Herbst's push of Reddick to the win
Daytona 500: Champion Tyler Reddick, Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin praise Riley Herbst's push of Reddick to the win
Nick BrombergMon, February 16, 2026 at 2:06 AM UTC
0
Does Tyler Reddick win the Daytona 500 without the help of his 23XI teammate Riley Herbst? Not according to Reddick.
Reddick, Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin were effusive in their praise for Herbst, who crashed ahead of the finish line as Reddick won the team’s first Daytona 500. Reddick passed Chase Elliott for the win off Turn 4 on the final lap after he got a drafting push from Herbst to get around Zane Smith.
Herbst then tried to go around the outside of Elliott as Reddick went to the inside, but he collided with Brad Keselowski as a crash took out nearly everyone racing for second place.
“I thought Riley did an unbelievable job pushing at the end,” Jordan, a co-owner of 23XI Racing, said after the race. “That shows you what teamwork can really, really do. He doesn't get enough credit. He won't get enough credit. But we feel the love. We understand exactly what he did.”
Herbst is in his second full season at NASCAR’s top level. After five seasons in what’s now the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series with three wins and a career-high of seventh in the points standings, Herbst moved up to the Cup Series in 2025 when 23XI expanded to three cars.
His rookie season was rough. Herbst, 26, finished 35th in the points standings with no top-10 finishes and just 17 lead-lap finishes in 36 races. Reddick, meanwhile, was ninth in the standings while Wallace was 11th.
The only full-time driver who finished below Herbst in the standings was Cody Ware — and it’s safe to say that 23XI has better equipment than Rick Ware Racing does. Herbst’s best finish came at Texas in the spring when he finished 14th; he never finished above 17th in any other race.
Advertisement
He already surpassed that finish by crossing the finish line eighth in the wreckage on Sunday.
“Just after I got crashed for the last time at the end, I was like — all I'm looking at is the scoreboard, how many horses I still got left in the race,” Hamlin said as he saw that Wallace, Reddick and Herbst all had a chance to win the race. “To see we had quite a few cars up there for that last restart was fantastic.”
“I knew we had a great shot. When they told me at the end, I had no idea how it happened, but watching it back, it just was great to see Tyler making all the right moves and Riley just being a great teammate there at the end, giving him the pushes when he needed it.”
Reddick said that he’d happily give Herbst “whatever he wants” after the race.
"Critical. I mean, I don't win that race without Riley Herbst. That's a fact," Reddick said.
"I think for me, I respect him even more on the frontstretch for — he pushed me to [Smith]. I got to the [Smith]. Now [Elliott] is in front of me, and I make my move.
"I love that he made the move that at the moment was right for him to win the Daytona 500, and I told him that. Man, I'm sorry it didn't work out for you in the way that you wanted it to, but you did — in my opinion, he did everything right on that last lap, as well, pushing me and then doing everything he could to win the race for himself.
"Obviously they all crashed, but he did a really good job today, as well."
Source: “AOL Sports”
