The 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Regular Season champion Tyler Reddick has advanced to the In-Season Challenge semifinals this week – and will be racing head-to-head with fellow Toyota driver, Ty Gibbs.

Reddick said the excellence his team has shown in the inaugural head-to-head midseason $1 million-to-win tournament has been enjoyable. And now possibly quite profitable. But more importantly for Reddick, the success in recent weeks is a good omen for his No. 45 23XI Racing team, which is still looking for its first win of the season after tying a career-best single-season mark last year with three victories.

“I think it’s fair to say, I think we are to some degree, frustrated we haven’t won, for sure but we’ve been using it as motivation to finding speed,’’ allowed Reddick, who is ranked 13th in the standings – tops among the four drivers still without a victory yet. “We haven’t backed away from fact we haven’t won a race, we’re using it to motivate ourselves right now.

As for the In-Season Challenge, Reddick smiled about his face-off with Gibbs. 

“The last three weeks I feel like we’ve been racing around each other a bunch, so I don’t know if I’m going to need any [real time updates) and I feel like that’s going to continue,’’ said Reddick, who will roll off fourth Sunday.

Reddick said he saw a statistic this week that he and Gibbs – who starts ninth – have run near in close proximity for more than 490 laps of racing at Dover in the last two years.

“It does feel like every time I’ve been here to Dover since Ty’s been in the Cup Series I can at least see him on the race track when I’m making laps,’’ Reddick said, adding, “I feel like we’re going to be around each other a lot this weekend and hopefully have some good hard racing.”

Interesting three of the four drivers still competing for the In-Season Challenge paycheck are named Ty – Reddick, Gibbs and Ty Dillon (who starts 21st) in the other half of the bracket.

“Has John Hunter changed his name yet?’’ Reddick joked of John Hunter Nemechek, the only driver still in the bracket not named Ty. The Legacy Motor Club driver will start 28th.

The In-Season Challenge grand finale between the winner of the Reddick-Gibbs and Nemechek-Dillon match-ups will be next week at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.