Tyler Reddick Puts Frustrating, Scary 2025 in Rear View With Daytona 500 Win

Tyler Reddick saw both of his sons and his wife in Victory Lane and he felt more than just joy after winning the Daytona 500. He thought about the last six months. The questions about why his son, Rookie, born in May, wasn’t acting like himself. And then the questions after the diagnosis of a kidney tumor that pressed upon an artery that caused signs of heart failure. And then the questions about the kidney surgery, how one lives a life with one kidney and the precautions they would have to take — assuming Rookie survived the surgery. "It was more reflecting on the personal things that we've went through, the struggles, the hard times, the uncertainties of knowing what's going on with Rookie," Reddick said during the Daytona 500 winners news conference about how he felt seeing his family. "Is Rookie going to be OK? What's going on there? For us to have this moment in this race, with everything we went through at the tail end of last year and the offseason getting back under our feet has its own place." Rookie is back to his crazy self. He's not letting the loud, earth-shaking Thurnderbird flyovers throughout the week at Daytona bother him, the same flyovers that made his older brother cry. "He came home around Martinsville weekend [after surgery] last year," Reddick said. "He's just been doing really good ever since he came home. He was doing good in the hospital, too." The family never got to take a vacation during the offseasn and planned one between the Clash and the Daytona 500. It then turned into an abbreviated three-day vacation because the Clash was postponed for three days because of snow. "It was awesome," Reddick said about the cruise they took. "He's always been kind of crawling, but he started to figure it out on the cruise ship, which was fun. "And then basically ever since we've been [in Daytona] in the bus, ... he's been like a speedster crawling fast." Reddick, who is often the one setting the pace on the track, was now trying to keep up with his 9-month-old. And he has his 6-year-old son, Beau, to thank in part for helping him handle the last several months. The personal struggles were hard, and the on-track struggles also weighed on Reddick. For the first time in four years and just a season removed from capturing the regular-season championship, Reddick went winless. "In the tough times, my son has done a great job of really helping lift my spirits up," Reddick said. "There have been plenty of times I've come back to the bus and we're getting ready to go ahead to the plane when I've just been irate or just sad because of something I did on the racetrack. "And my son has done a really good job of picking me up in those moments. We share these moments together as a family." When Tyler talked to me for our "Who Is Tyler Reddick" piece, he said he wasn’t focused much on racing at the end of the 2025 season. "When I was still in the car during those times, I wanted to win really bad for a number of reasons," he told me. "But it was weird where I had no desire, nothing to go to [our shop] Airspeed, to work or put anything into racing. It was when I was home and when my family needed me was where I needed to be." Now, Reddick appears to have a little bit of a new focus for his on-track performance. "Ownership held a meeting with everyone in competition a couple of weeks ago," team co-owner Denny Hamlin said during the Daytona 500 winners' news conference. "I look back there, Tyler is the only one making notes, and he just was really turned on. "That's what we want out of him. I knew four or five years ago, whenever it was that I talked to him for the first time about, ‘Hey, I need you over here.’" Did Reddick need to win the Daytona 500 to put 2025 behind him? "I think he already had put 2025 behind him," Reddick crew chief Billy Scott told me Monday. "He certainly put a lot of work into that this off season. All of us did a lot of reflection, a lot of communication and I think this was just a reward for doing that and proof that it paid off." Reddick might have put it behind him, but he also won’t forget it. "It was time to move on and use what the feelings that 2025 gave me as motivation to never let that happen again," Reddick told me Monday. "This is one race, but it's a Daytona 500. I'm a champion of that race. "And that's huge for me and in my career when I look back on it one day. But getting the year started on the right foot, winning right away, we're kind of setting the tone for how we want to operate this year. And I love the way that it started." During the Monday morning jacket and ring ceremony that included more team photos, his two boys were still enjoying the victory. The team waited for Beau, who was on the photographer bleachers in Victory Lane, to run down to them to join in the photos. Reddick’s parents were there, too, helping out when they could. "The more crazy it is, whether it's from me, whether it's from Beau, whether it's from the Thunderbirds or just stuff happening around like in Victory Lane, Rookie loves this stuff," Reddick said. "The crazier it is, he just starts laughing and loves it. He's wild. Like his dad."