-
Ryan McGee
A chance to see something that we’ve never seen before. When you remove all the gunk that collects on us as sports fans, like a pit crew member scraping off midrace melted marbles to check his team’s tire treads, deep down that’s really all we want: to see our heroes on the court, field or speedway check a box that no one has ever witnessed.
This Sunday at Phoenix Raceway, we have one of those chances.
Since NASCAR‘s top series took its first green flag on June 19, 1949, a span of 77-plus years of Cup racing, no driver has ever started one of those seasons with four consecutive victories. Now, Tyler Reddick, and his No. 45 Toyota co-owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan, has a chance to do just that.
How rare of air has the car sponsored by Air Jordan flown into? Well, Reddick has already won the roulette wheel that is the Daytona 500, the roulette wheel hooked up to a turbocharger that is Atlanta, and the video game bumper pool match that is the Circuit of the Americas road course in Austin. Now comes Phoenix, a de facto short track measuring one mile with a layout flatter than a crêpe.
In his previous 12 Phoenix starts, Reddick has posted two top-fives and four top-10s with an average finish of 17.8. That average finish is not awesome, but his average finishes at Daytona and Atlanta are 21.3 and 16.4, and those are after his wins this year. (His average in Austin is 4.0 with two wins in six starts.)
He is already the first driver to win the first three races of a Cup Series season. Now, keep in mind that for the first 13 years of the Daytona 500, 1959-71, the dual qualifying races that split the garage in half were treated as points-paying regular-season events and most of those years they were in those first three races, so that made the task impossible. But it’s also never needed any help when it comes to degree of difficulty.
In fact, according to ESPN Research, only two teams won the first three races of the year and those were split between teammates. In 1957, DePaolo Engineering won two races with Marvin Panch and one with Fireball Roberts. In 1963, Petty Enterprises did it via Jim Paschal’s two wins and Richard Petty’s one.
Speaking of Petty, The King made a career out of compiling stacks of statistics that are so ridiculous they sound imaginary, but none feel more made up than his back-to-back-to-back checkered flag abilities. His Royal Fastness won two races in a row 22 times, three in a row nine times, five straight in 1971, and — take a deep breath — in 1967, he won 10 in a row! Oh, and while we make a very big deal out of the fact that NASCAR’s current Next Gen car driven by Reddick & Co. is a tank that can be used on all types of racetracks, when Petty won those 10 in a row and 27 of that year’s 48 races, he did nearly all of it using one lone Plymouth Belvedere everywhere from Daytona to dirt.
But, in fairness, the measuring stick that Reddick is being held to this weekend is that of NASCAR’s so-called modern era that began in 1972, when the schedule was slashed to its current 30-something events per year and moved to all asphalt speedways. Over that time, 54 years, only eight drivers won four straight races and all are already in the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
It started with Cale Yarborough in 1976, the year he also won the first of three consecutive Cup Series championships. Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt also won titles in their four-peat years, 1981 and ’87. Bill Elliott in ’92 and Mark Martin in ’93 were not able to win the Cup the years they won four in a row. Neither did Harry Gant, who became known as “Mr. September” when he won four straight Cup races in ’91, but it’s often forgotten that during that run he also won two straight Busch Series races (now O’Reilly Series) and was dominating at North Wilkesboro seemingly en route to a fifth win before bum brakes did in his Oldsmobile. Jeff Gordon won four in a row as part of his 13-win championship season of 1998, still considered by many to be the greatest year ever steered in a stock car during the modern era.
But then, after four four-peats in eight years, it has happened only once since then. In 2007, Jimmie Johnson won at Martinsville, Atlanta, Texas and Phoenix, four of the season’s final five races, to outpace Gordon en route for the second of his five straight Cup titles.
Nearly two decades later, we are still waiting for someone to do it again. Reddick is the ninth driver to win three in a row since Johnson’s last four-peat. After an eight-year drought, both Kyle Busch and Joey Logano won three straight in 2015. Then three drivers posted three-peats in 2018, Busch again, joined by Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski. In 2021, on the way to his first Cup title, Kyle Larson did it twice in the same season. Then, one year ago, Christopher Bell won at Atlanta, Austin and Phoenix — races No. 2 through 4 of the season — before finishing 12th at Las Vegas.
“It’s a weird but awesome feeling because when it’s happening you kind of feel like you can do no wrong, from me to the crew,” Bell said of the streak last fall. “But then when it ends and then you don’t win for a while again, I think it took us 25 races to get the next one, you’re like, where did it go? It used to be so easy! It’s like your golf swing. When it’s working, enjoy it, because it could go away at any moment.”
Bell was not able to cash in his in-season three-peat for a championship at that season’s end, settling for a runner-up finish behind Larson. And while we are all obsessing over Reddick’s chances of winning four in a row, Reddick himself is much more concerned about that bigger picture and much bigger Cup.
So, Tyler, if you’re reading this, take notes. Of the 29 drivers who have won three races in a row since 1972, a dozen went on to win the title, including Busch in ’15 and Larson in ’21.
But those chances greatly increase should he win his fourth in a row. Of the eight who pulled off the four-peat since ’72, five ended the year with the Cup in hand.
“It truly has been a perfect start,” says Reddick. “It’s the finishes, but it’s also the vibes. The way that we’ve been addressing and pushing things in the right direction, and I’m just extremely pleased with all of it. I never won back-to-back in NASCAR, and I obviously never won three in a row.”
Few have. Even fewer have won four. And it must be noted that every single name mentioned in this story is considered an all-time NASCAR great. Nary a fluke on the roster. If Reddick is standing in victory lane again on Sunday evening, then on his way to legend he shall be.
“Our No. 1 goal is to win races,” Reddick adds. “If you do that, that other stuff, what people say about your career, that takes care of itself.”
