Tyler Reddick said 23XI Racing had 30 to 40 employees in a temporary building when he joined and now has more than 200 at its own Charlotte facility.
A NASCAR team is usually described through its drivers. Reddick described a company: a headcount that has multiplied, two cars that became three full-time teams plus a part-time fourth, and a workforce whose job is the six days when nobody is racing.
"It is a team effort. It's not just some dude behind the wheel turning left."
Reddick drives for 23XI Racing, the team Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin own, and he won this year's Daytona 500 and the two races after it.
I listened to the full segment so you can skip it.
Here are the 4 moments that matter.
👤 Guest: Tyler Reddick, a NASCAR Cup Series driver for 23XI Racing, the team owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin
🎙️ Hosts: Paul Sweeney and Scarlet Fu, who anchor Bloomberg Intelligence from Bloomberg's Interactive Brokers studio in New York
📰 Published: 10 September 2026 on Bloomberg Intelligence
🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ 7 min
Key Takeaways
23XI Racing has gone from 30 to 40 employees in a temporary facility to more than 200 in its own building
Two cars became three full-time teams plus a part-time fourth
The team's name is its owners: 23 for Michael Jordan, 11 for Denny Hamlin, who still races against Reddick on Sundays
Winning the first three races of a season had never been done in NASCAR before this year
Not by Dale Earnhardt and not by Richard Petty, in Reddick's telling
Reddick calls the driving the small part: the week is data, simulator work and physical and mental preparation for one day
Paul Sweeney's bank tried to take NASCAR public and the France family refused
1. Michael Jordan's 23XI
The team's name is a ledger of who owns it. Reddick said "the 23 in the name comes from Michael" and that the 11 comes from the co-owner, whom Sweeney supplied: "Denny Hamlin, who I compete against, who still races on Sundays, is also in the ownership role as well."
He described the arrangement as two different kinds of help. "Fortunate to have a dynamic like that where you have someone like Michael to lean on then a fellow competitor who knows the sport."
On how involved Jordan is: "I think he's into everything that he gets his hands." Sweeney suggested the interest in stock-car racing dates to Jordan's time at the University of North Carolina, and Reddick allowed that it is fair.
2. Three Straight to Start
The season opened with the biggest thing available and then with something nobody had done. "Yeah, it was a bit of a roller coaster for us. We got the year started off. With accomplishing the biggest thing that you can in a season, winning the Daytona 500." Then: "Winning the first three races in a season. Crazy enough, that had never been done before."
His evidence for never is two names. "Dale hadn't done it. Richard hadn't done it." He said all three tracks were hard ones: the Daytona 500 is hard to win, the reconfigured Atlanta race — now EchoPark Speedway — is hard to execute, "And then we topped that streak off at Circuit of the Americas. To make it three in a row."
The hot start was wider than the streak. "Yeah, we got off to an incredibly hot start, winning five of, I think it was the first nine races, and just all the things going right, fighting through adversity."
Then the year turned. "We hit a bit of the downhill side of it and got in the dip, just with a lot of failures and things of that nature." Sweeney, reading the season off nascar.com, had put him fourth in points with five wins and a run of top fives and top tens.
3. Athlete, Not Driver
Asked whether he thinks of himself as an athlete or a driver, Reddick took the athlete framing and then redefined the job. "But, so it's the mindset of an athlete. The bulk of my time is spent preparing debriefing, going over data, SIM work, physical preparation, the mental side of it."
The ratio of preparation to performance is the part that surprises people. "I do all this prep work, if you will, for one day out of the week. The rest of it is spent getting ready."
He uses the collective pronoun deliberately, and Sweeney noticed. "It is a team effort. It's not just some dude behind the wheel turning left."
4. From 40 to 200 Staff
The growth is the clearest number in the conversation. Reddick said the team was in a temporary building when he joined: "I think we may have had 30 to 40 employees, but it's grown a lot."
Now there is a building with a name and a highway exit. "We now have our home we call Airspeed right off of Interstate 77 just in Charlotte, and it's grown to I think we have over 200 employees now."
The race operation multiplied with it. "Went from two cars to three full-time teams with a fourth part-time team with Corey Heim," who Reddick said has won multiple races in a part-time season.
Why the headcount matters to a driver. He said the people are what make progress possible — the debriefs, the preparation, and the pit crew that has to execute during the race. "And then it takes the entire team to prepare for the races."
Bonus Insights
Sweeney's own history with the sport is a piece of capital-markets history. He said he was on the investment banking team that took Speedway Motorsports public in 1994, that the company owned tracks at Charlotte, Bristol and Atlanta and built more in Las Vegas and out west, and that he "Made a ton of money off of those guys" and went to 24 Winston Cup races in about four years. The one deal that did not happen: "Tried to take the NASCAR public, but the France family did not want anything to do with that." Scarlet Fu said they like being private, and Sweeney confirmed: "we pitched them hard, but no way."
Reddick's route into the sport was television and a car dealership. He said he grew up watching the Daytona 500 and the big races, fell in love with the drivers as characters, and came from a family in the car dealership business, so cars were always around. "And yeah, the only thing cooler than a car is one that goes fast, that has numbers on it and does all that." He said his own passion was oval and dirt racing, and that the top level at which to do that is NASCAR, which made it the dream to obtain. Nobody knows whether it will work out, he said: "You're just going to enjoy the ride and try to make the most of every opportunity."
Reddick's bottom line is that a modern NASCAR team is a 200-person operation whose driver spends six days preparing for one, and that the value of having Michael Jordan and an active competitor as owners is that one brings the platform and the other already knows the job.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
23XI Racing (Reddick's team, named for Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin, now more than 200 employees at its Airspeed facility in Charlotte)
NASCAR (The series Reddick races in, and the company Sweeney's bank tried and failed to take public)
Speedway Motorsports (The track owner Sweeney helped take public in 1994, with Charlotte, Bristol and Atlanta among its venues)
If this was worth your time, send it to someone closer to the industry than you are.
Get the latest market chatter as it happens: