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.

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.

"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.

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.

Official Goodyear 400 Starting Lineup

Pos	Car	Driver	Lap time	Speed
1	45	Tyler Reddick	29.072	169.152
2	23	Bubba Wallace	29.196	168.472
3	9	Chase Elliott	29.319	167.727
4	5	Kyle Larson	29.377	167.396
5	6	Brad Keselowski	29.424	167.129
6	17	Chris Buescher	29.443	167.021
7	12	Ryan Blaney	29.476	166.834
8	8	Kyle Busch	29.478	166.823
9	11	Denny Hamlin	29.500	166.698
10	3	Austin Dillon	29.538	166.484
11	7	Daniel Suarez	29.550	166.416
12	2	Austin Cindric	29.570	166.304
13	24	William Byron	29.601	166.130
14	35	Riley Herbst	29.613	166.062
15	48	Justin Allgaier	29.624	166.001
16	77	Carson Hocevar	29.677	165.704
17	60	Ryan Preece	29.708	165.531
18	47	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	29.721	165.459
19	38	Zane Smith	29.723	165.448
20	71	Michael McDowell	29.731	165.403
21	42	John Hunter Nemechek	29.776	165.153
22	20	Christopher Bell	29.785	165.103
23	19	Chase Briscoe	29.819	164.915
24	43	Erik Jones	29.825	164.882
25	1	Ross Chastain	29.847	164.760
26	21	Josh Berry	29.878	164.589
27	16	AJ Allmendinger	29.885	164.551
28	54	Ty Gibbs	29.889	164.529
29	22	Joey Logano	29.912	164.402
30	4	Noah Gragson	29.980	164.029
31	34	Todd Gilliland	29.997	163.936
32	88	Connor Zilisch	30.091	163.424
33	97	Shane van Gisbergen	30.125	163.240
34	51	Cody Ware	30.309	162.249
35	41	Cole Custer	30.422	161.646
36	10	Ty Dillon	30.584	160.790
37	66	Timmy Hill	32.044	153.464