Daytona International Speedway (Daytona Beach, Fla.) — Michael Jordan grew up taking family vacations to NASCAR races.
The family — dad, mom, his siblings — would drive from North Carolina to Talladega, Darlington and Rockingham and root for their favorite drivers: Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough.
As Jordan said about Yarborough: “He was the original 11. Sorry, Denny.”
The Denny he was referring to was Denny Hamlin, who drives for Joe Gibbs Racing but also convinced Jordan to form a race team with him to start in the 2021 season.
The team, 23XI Racing, was a nod to Jordan’s number for his basketball career and Hamlin’s car number.
Jordan, though, probably has a favorite No. 45. That’d be Tyler Reddick, who won the 2026 Daytona 500 with a last-lap pass Sunday.
“I’m ecstatic,” Jordan said during his television interview in Victory Lane. “I don’t even know what to say. It feels like I won a championship.”
Michael Jordan was all smiles celebrating Tyler Reddick’s Daytona 500 victory.
MUST-READ FROM JORDAN & 23XI’s TRIUMPH:
It was an early birthday present for Jordan, who turns 63 in a couple of days. He appeared downright giddy as he gave his team members high-fives and then lifted the Harley J. Earl trophy with Reddick.
Jordan showed similar energy a couple of years ago when he celebrated his first in-person victory at a race.
“He loves this race team,” Hamlin said in Sunday’s postrace news conference. “In [a] assembly that we had just some weeks in the past with the workforce, I reminded them about Talladega and the way excited he was on pit street.
“And I used to be like, ‘Do you guys perceive the obligations that you’ve, that you’ve the ability to convey pleasure to Michael Jordan? You have got that energy.’”
Reddick joked to me after that Talladega win because the much-taller Jordan carried Reddick’s son on his shoulders: “I hope he had enjoyable seeing what the world is like from up there.”
Jordan beamed with extra pleasure later that yr when Reddick received the regular-season title.
However this was the Daytona 500, the stuff goals are fabricated from for many who comply with the game.
“I can not even consider it,” Jordan stated. “It was so gratifying. We had 4 guys that had been actually preventing, serving to one another out. You by no means understand how these races are going to finish. You simply attempt to survive.”
Tyler Reddick is embraced by workforce proprietor Michael Jordan in Victory Lane.
For individuals who do comply with the game, they know all about how Jordan had the stature and the pockets and the tenacity to sue NASCAR on antitrust grounds. 23XI and Entrance Row Motorsports filed the go well with in October 2024 and went eight days into trial in December earlier than settling with the end result higher constitution phrases.
Jordan has tried to say all the proper issues to maneuver the game ahead. NASCAR Chairman Jim France and President Steve O’Donnell visited Victory Lane to congratulate Reddick and the 23XI workforce, which earned its first Daytona 500 victory.
“It is simply cool to see him get the enjoyment out of that,” Reddick crew chief Billy Scott stated in his postrace information convention. “I can not think about what it is like enjoying on the stage he did and conducting the issues he did after which simply strolling away from it and going again to the issues that the remainder of us expertise in each day life.”
Effectively, most individuals don’t expertise a Daytona 500 win, a victory that Reddick obtained with the assistance of some vital pushes from teammate Riley Herbst.
“We hung in there all day,” Jordan stated. “Nice technique by the workforce, and we gave ourselves an opportunity on the finish.”
Reddick actually will get advantages from racing for Jordan. He’s a Jordan Model athlete and infrequently has paint schemes related to essentially the most well-known sneaker model on earth.
The previous grime late mannequin racer isn’t flashy like Jordan however Jordan likes to win, and Reddick has the expertise — a lot in order that in 2022, Hamlin introduced that Reddick would be part of the workforce in 2024.
However after Kurt Busch’s concussion, Reddick obtained his launch from Richard Childress Racing and acquired to 23XI sooner than anticipated.
“Denny and Michael, these two have believed in me for years,” Reddick stated. “They’ve wished me to be part of 23XI. It is a mixture of can we come by means of on the guarantees that I made for them and so they made for me kind of factor.
“They believed in me so much, and so they wished me to be right here, a part of 23XI actually badly. We made all of it work. These are the kind of moments that I am imagined to ship on them for, and it is simply good to have the ability to do this.”
Three months in the past, Reddick didn’t know what the way forward for the 23XI Racing workforce would appear to be. They may have misplaced that lawsuit, placing the workforce’s future in jeopardy.
Tyler Reddick delivered 23XI its first Daytona 500 victory.
Jordan testified through the trial and that’s the place he instructed a few of his story about his love of racing and Yaroborugh.
He instructed me and one other reporter when he fashioned the workforce about his imaginative and prescient.
“My greatest dialog to Denny was I don’t wish to … simply go round and round and round and end 18th, nineteenth, twentieth, thirtieth,” Jordan stated. “I wish to win. I wish to be put within the place for the very best probability for us to win. That’s my aggressive nature.”
Lower than six years later, he can say he’s a Daytona 500 championship proprietor. And that has the whole lot to do with Jordan. That goes again to Herbst, within the workforce’s third chartered automobile, that pushed Reddick to the win.
“Riley did an unbelievable job pushing on the finish,” Jordan stated. “That reveals you what teamwork can actually, actually do.
“He does not get sufficient credit score. He will not get sufficient credit score. However we really feel the love. We perceive precisely what he did.”
Jordan paid $28 million for that constitution. Why? Jordan testified final December:
“I prefer to win,” he stated. “And if the chance to own a 3rd constitution, [it means] extra drivers, higher probability to win.”
That could be simple arithmetic. However solely somebody who has watched racing for years would actually perceive the racing dynamic. Jordan does. And Reddick is grateful.
“Simply to have the ability to do these nice issues for Michael, somebody who loves racing as a lot as he does and is captivated with successful as a lot as I’m or Denny is — to have the ability to come by means of on these guarantees and meet these expectations is the kind of stuff that you simply simply love to have the ability to do,” Reddick stated.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports activities. He has spent many years protecting motorsports, together with over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting Information, NASCAR Scene journal and The (Daytona Seashore) Information-Journal. Comply with him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
