NASCAR insider Jeff Gluck has questioned how 23XI Racing’s performance has “fallen off” in the last couple of months.
The team, which is co-owned by Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin and NBA icon Michael Jordan, has had a rocky start to the season. Tyler Reddick, who won the 2024 regular season, is currently sixth in the standings. His team-mates Bubba Wallace and Riley Herbst are in 10th and 32nd, respectively.
While discussing the team on the Teardown podcast, Gluck explained:
“23XI, they’re weird, man. They’ve fallen off.
“What’s up with that? I don’t get that at all. Reddick might’ve had the fastest car at Texas, he just never got the track position. But then he told me at Texas, ‘Oh yeah, I feel like what happens, the speed we’ll have at Texas will translate to Kansas, even though they’re different tracks,’ and then they just didn’t really show anything.
“I thought, you know, I guess Bubba was up there. When he had his issue, he was maybe sixth or something. He had a penalty and then he was gone, you know, which happens a lot these days, right? If you have a setback, you’re kind of done, unless it’s early in the race, then you could overcome it. But yeah, I mean, Reddick — we never really saw what we’d expect out of them, right? So, I don’t really know.”
Kansas was Wallace’s fourth DNF of the season. Speaking to the media after his latest race retirement, the 23XI Racing driver explained:
“Not really sure [what happened]. Not sure if the 67 [Corey Heim] got into somebody, and I just tried to hang a left and stay in the gas and I got clipped in the right rear. It’s unfortunate. I hate it. It all stems back from our penalty earlier on.
“We tried so hard to fight back, but it wasn’t meant to be. We had a lot of confidence coming into this race. Felt good about it [Saturday], but just not our day. Not our last couple of weeks.”
NASCAR Cup Series: Current standings
- Kyle Larson – 469
- William Byron – 434
- Christopher Bell – 384
- Chase Elliott – 378
- Ryan Blaney – 362
- Tyler Reddick – 357
- Denny Hamlin – 346
- Alex Bowman – 325
- Joey Logano – 318
- Bubba Wallace – 310
- Ross Chastain – 300
- Chris Buescher – 284
- Chase Briscoe – 278
- Austin Cindric – 273
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr – 258
- Ryan Preece – 251
- Josh Berry – 244
- Kyle Busch – 244
- John H. Nemechek – 234
- Carson Hocevar – 230
- Michael McDowell – 228
- Austin Dillon – 227
- Zane Smith – 227
- Todd Gilliland – 227
- AJ Allmendinger – 218
- Ty Gibbs – 217
- Daniel Suárez – 209
- Justin Haley – 206
- Erik Jones – 196
- Ty Dillon – 188
- Noah Gragson – 181
- Riley Herbst – 151
- Brad Keselowski – 148
- Cole Custer – 139
- Shane Van Gisbergen – 138
- Cody Ware – 68
- Jimmie Johnson – 34
- Corey LaJoie – 24
- JJ Yeley – 9
- Katherine Legge – 7
- Casey Mears – 2
- Burt Myers – 1
- Chad Finchum – 1
- Martin Truex Jr – 1
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