Even though a botched pit stop with 43 laps remaining in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway toppled Tyler Reddick down to a 30th-place finish position, the first year 23XI Racing driver remains confident the 23XI Racing organization is now in a position to contend on every NASCAR Cup Series weekend.
“This is an organization I believe in and I’m glad that I’m here and we’re building that up now,” said Reddick. “There is a huge plan in place and a lot of growth left in this team. To be where we are at this early as we are still checking boxes and getting things where we want them to be.”
Steve Lauletta, team president for the 23XI Racing organization, says the third-year team, which has four wins — including at Circuit of The Americas earlier this year with Reddick — and two poles to its name still has a way to go to reach its goals, despite having both Reddick and teammate Bubba Wallace currently in the top 15 with the playoffs looming.
“We still have a lot of work to get done,” said Lauletta. “I try to remind everybody that we’re only two years and a little more than two and a half seasons into our lifespan and we’re racing against teams that have been doing it for decades and we are holding our own. We’re showing up every week with really fast cars. We’re competitive. We’ve knocked four wins off. We’ve got the No. 45 (Reddick) in the playoffs and the No. 23 (Wallace) fighting to make it and if we got both cars into the playoffs in the third season, that was a goal we set out before the year started. So yeah, we talk about acting as one team and everybody believes that the people that we have and the processes that we’re putting in place and our approach is one that s going to lend to a lot of success.”
Lauletta is aware that the 23XIRacing effort is still a work in progress.
“This is the first year that we have our own pit crew. So we’re in our third season in total and our first season with a pit crew and there are growing pains in all of it still,” he noted. “We’ve got a new shop under construction, so we still operate out of a facility that wasn’t ours and wasn’t designed for us. We are just kind of making the best of it because we only had four and a half months to have ourselves ready to race in 2021, so all of those things are part of the building process of a new race team.”
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Reddick and Wallace have both praised the team’s consistency and preparation, which Lauletta says is key part of the mental game ahead of the run for the playoffs.
“It does say a lot,” said Lauletta. “I mean, it’s certainly the start of it. It’s a lot easier to work on the things that can happen during a race, which we’ve obviously not flawlessly executed this year. We’ve had the chance to be competing for some wins and for a multitude of different reasons, we haven’t been able to knock those down. It’s easier to focus on how to fix executional issues than it is to find speed in race cars and we’re lucky and happy that we do show up with cars that can compete. Now we’ve just got to work on all the other things that go into running up front all day and ultimately winning a race. That’s really our focus.
“There are a million things that have to be done both as you prepare to go to the racetrack each week, figure out what you need to do back at the shop, what you do with your employees and what we do with our partners. There are so many facets to this business and that is what makes it fun, because there is a lot to really get aligned to have an organization functioning at the highest level. The people at 23XI Racing are fantastic. They work really hard. They enjoy being a part of the same team. Now we just need to work really hard the next three weeks to get Bubba locked into the playoffs and then put our heads down for 10 strong races in the playoffs.
“There are three races to go and anything can happen, so I would be much happier if we had a win for each team and we’d be locked in, but we’re not there just yet and we’re in a position that we can still make it into the playoffs with the number 23 and Bubba, which he hasn’t done before in his Cup career. That would be a big step forward for our team and for him as a driver. He did a great job for us in the number 45 last year in fighting for the Owner’s Championship. Getting both cars s the playoffs is a goal that we set out before the season and we’re confident that we can still get there.”
Having worked at Chip Ganassi Racing for over a decade before migrating over to 23XI Racing three years ago, Lauletta has been adamant about 23XI Racing’s aim to be a brand, as opposed to strictly a stock car racing team. Race sponsorships with brands such as Monster Energy, Dr. Pepper, Columbia, McDonald’s and Rocket League have all festooned the team’s race cars in addition to bringing new brand attention to the sport.
“We’re trying to do some things that help us expose the sport of NASCAR and our team 23XI Racing to a wider audience. We want as many core NASCAR fans to cheer for us, but we also want to reach out and bring new fans to the sport and that’s what the Rocket League initiative was about,” Lauletta explained. “Partnering with Garth Brooks earlier this year was great. West Coast Customs worked with us, Travis Pastrana and Kamui Kobayashi and the No. 67 were about what we are trying to do. You know having these global motorsports superstars coming to NASCAR and driving for us and hopefully having some of their fans wanting to pay attention to 23XI Racing, all of that is part of us building this brand and this team.
“We’ve been lucky to have some great opportunities and we have great partners that bring us a lot of opportunities because of the reach of their brands. That kind of helps us expand or audience and our impact on some things. Toyota asking us if we were interested in running Kamui at a race was something we thought was a great opportunity from a brand-building perspective, but also on the track he’s a superstar with a lot of knowledge in his background that we can learn from. Even though he hasn’t driven these cars before, he’s a master at racing and how can he help Bubba and Tyler as we prepare for this weekend and beyond. He was with us in Chicago. He’s just been a pleasure to have around and that’s all part of this opportunity we are given by having the partners and ownership group that we have.”
23XI Racing was founded and co-owned by Denny Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan, and Lauletta says Hamlin continues to help lead the team forward in his unique role as a team owner for 23 XI while continue to race a Toyota for a different organization.
“He’s great. He’s obviously focused on what he’s doing behind the (Joe Gibbs Racing) No. 11, but when he’s not doing that, he is certainly helping us continue to build this team and to become competitive,” Lauretta said of Hamlin. “He said it was a five-year path to become a championship-caliber organization. We are in year three and we all feel like we are on a trajectory to get there, but there is still a lot of work to do.”