Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace Secure Front Row Sweep For 23XI Racing

Darlington, S.C. — 23XI Racing continued its hot start to the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season on Saturday afternoon at Darlington Raceway as Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace swept the front row for the organization in qualifying for Sunday’s Goodyear 400.

Reddick, driving the No. 45 Xfinity Toyota Camry, turned a fast lap time of 29.072 seconds (169.152 mph), which allowed him to secure his 14th career pole position.

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With a new package for this weekend’s race at Darlington, which increased horsepower and decreased downforce, the cars have been hard to handle for drivers. Several competitors, including Reddick, caught the outside wall during their qualifying runs.

“I feel like the topic of conversation kind of caught wind, if you will, two weeks ago or so, how tricky it was going to be coming into here with less downforce and more power,” Reddick said of the challenge of the new package in his post-qualifying press conference. “And yeah, just it was super important to have good work back at Airspeed on the simulator for what adjustments we needed to make for that.”

Despite the scrape into the outside wall, Reddick was able to top Wallace by a margin of 0.124 seconds for the top qualifying time in the session, and the driver, who started the season off with a historic run of three consecutive wins, will attempt to snag his fourth win of the year from the pole.

Reddick said he felt good about his lap after getting through the first set of turns successfully, but wasn’t sure how things looked after he got into the wall.

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“I knew qualifying was going to be really tough. And a lot of drivers were having trouble finding that edge, that limit, in Turn 1, and I nailed that pretty good. I felt pretty good about the lap going down the backstraightaway,” Reddick explained. “And I truly think I just kind of underdid it through the center of [Turns] 3 and 4, and just felt like I had to get on the gas and get off the corner, and basically ran into the wall.”

Reddick says the scrape created cosmetic damage to his No. 45 machine, and will not impact his ability to start from the front of the field on Sunday.

In addition to Reddick, Carson Hocevar, Michael McDowell, Erik Jones, and Ty Gibbs also made contact with the outside wall during their qualifying runs.

For 23XI Racing, a team owned by NBA legend Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin, this is its second-ever front row qualifying sweep.

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Wallace is racing with an extra spring in his step this week, as he and his wife Amanda welcomed their second child into the world on Thursday.

Chase Elliott nabbed the third position in the qualifying session, and he will be joined in the second row of Sunday’s starting lineup by Kyle Larson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate.

Elliott’s No. 9 Chevrolet was among three cars that failed pre-race inspection multiple times on Saturday. The others were the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford, and the No. 66 Garage 66 Ford. All three teams had their car chiefs ejected for the remainder of the weekend, and have lost their pit selection for the race.

Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher were able to lockdown the third row for RFK Racing as they’ll start fifth and sixth, while Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and Austin Dillon rounded out the top-10 qualifiers.

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Official Goodyear 400 Starting Lineup

This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace Secure Front Row Sweep For 23XI Racing.