Despite slow start to year, Reddick “always had the speed”

Based strictly on results, the start of the 2023 NASCAR Cup season appeared to be a rough one.

Reddick, in his first year driving the No. 45 Toyota for 23XI Racing, began by getting wrecked out of the season’s first two races, leaving him 38th in the series standings.

In the following weeks, he gradually improved with a 15th at Las Vegas, third at Phoenix and fifth at Atlanta but had only led three laps in the season’s first five races.

The full potential of Reddick and his No. 45 team were on display Sunday as he led a race-high 41 of 75 laps and warded off repeated challengers in three overtimes to earn his first victory of the season.

“It’s just racing honestly. That’s all it was,” Reddick, 27, said of the start to his season. “It’s just how racing can be sometimes. You look at what happened, it wasn’t like we flat-out sucked. It wasn’t this or that. It was just circumstances.

“Some of it was mistakes that were made or things we could have definitely done better. But they were all things we could learn from.”

Reddick said he would have much rather have gone through the learning experiences early in the season than see them develop later in the year when he could be in contention to win a championship.

“In the grand scheme of things, when you have the entire year in front of you, it’s good to learn from things early in the year,” he said.

“For me, it didn’t really affect me. From my perspective in the shop, it didn’t seem to be affecting the team. We just kept focusing, Next weekend we’re going to bring the best car we can, start over, go from there.”

Reddick’s crew chief, Billy Scott, said the start to the year was difficult but felt “it was only a matter of time” before the team would have a breakthrough performance.

“I think the important thing is that we always knew it was there for speed. So, I think we always had the speed there,” Scott said. “Daytona, crashed racing for the lead. Vegas, had an incident running inside the top five.

“I think it was just a matter of time. It’s not like we were wrecking out of races, running in the back. Nice to finally finish it off, though.”

Team co-owner Denny Hamlin said he was confident the team’s early races were not indicative of its potential.

“I mean, it looked bad on the scorecard for the first three…