Nearly 70 races into his Cup Series career, Riley Herbst has quickly built a reputation in the NASCAR garage. He has become known as possibly the most positive person in the sport.
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He has continued to smile through good days and bad, and he has made his competitors believe that he could experience genuine tragedy and move on far better than they ever could.
"We just did a little golf cart content thing, and a question came about: What do you like the most about your teammates," 23XI Racing's Bubba Wallace told media members at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
"We all had to bullshit our way through it, but (Tyler) Reddick said it the best. You could just run over his dog — Riley's dog — and he'd be like, 'Ah, it's okay, man. You know, we'll go back and we'll get another dog and we'll go race on Sunday.'
"The way he handles bad days, you would think he doesn't have bad days."
🎤 Mics were hot on Bubba’s golf cart 😂 pic.twitter.com/fSTEiuRFJX
— 23XI Racing (@23XIRacing) July 12, 2026
It's true that Herbst is rarely seen without a smile throughout the race weekend. Even after learning that Corey Heim would replace him in 23XI Racing's third car next season, Herbst has continued to go about his business while showcasing an upbeat personality.
Other drivers in the garage have taken notice, including the one who owns his car. 23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin saw and appreciated how Herbst responded to a rookie season in which he had no top-10 finishes, five DNFs, and an average finish of 26.4.
"What I like about him really is how humble he is as a person," Hamlin said. "I really admire his work ethic, he doesn't let tough weeks drag him down, he's right back to work on Monday.
"I know him more professionally than I do personally, but that's what I like about him is his ability to not get down, especially after the year that he had (in 2025). It's easy to lose confidence. If anything, it was a good self-reflection for him to just go work on where he needed to improve, and he did that."
Yet, upbeat has not always been the description for Herbst. Back when he raced in the O'Reilly Parts Series, he went through some dark days while dealing with adversity at Joe Gibbs Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing.
Herbst watched drivers with far less experience win races before him, and he began to question whether he even belonged in the sport.
The Las Vegas native put in extensive work behind the scenes as he worked his way through NASCAR's ranks, and he took over cars capable of winning several races in a season.
But he continued to fall short of victory lane and the expectations placed upon him. He crashed several times each season, and he did not contend for championships.
This weighed heavily on him in the early seasons of his O'Reilly Series tenure.
"I was so young," Herbst told FanBuzz. "I was a kid who just got thrown in and got put a lot of expectations on me, which I guess is a good thing looking back on it, because people expected me to do good.
"And I didn't live up to those expectations, and I got a lot of slack in 2020 at JGR, and then obviously '21 at Stewart-Haas when Briscoe won 12 races the year before, and I hopped in the (No.) 98. And it was just a lot, and I think that was a lot for me to take on as a young kid."
Herbst turned 21 two races into his first full-time season in the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series. He did not win his first race (Las Vegas in 2023) until he turned 24. He added two more wins after turning 25.
Now 27, he is significantly different than the kid who first joined Joe Gibbs Racing. He is far more mature, and he knows how to handle bad days far better.
"I mean, we all go through it, but yeah, I think he's just happy all the time," Wallace added. "Whether he's truly not, he makes you feel happy even on the days where I'm not. Like it's fun.
"I said it on (Door, Bumper, Clear) — he's that one classmate that you don't want sitting beside (you) in any important meeting because he's just over there saying something dumb under his breath or making a face trying to make you laugh. It's nice to have that."
Are our guys on the same page? 🧠🧐 pic.twitter.com/CTkL1ohem8
— 23XI Racing (@23XIRacing) August 13, 2026
Reaching this point took some doing. If you ask Herbst, the process began when he surrounded himself with the right people and he learned how to define true success.
This is quite important in a sport where the winning percentage is minuscule. After all, only one person celebrates each week.
If you ask crew chief Davin Restivo and Herbst's former spotter, Tim Fedewa, they specifically point to a one-off Cup Series start for Front Row Motorsports.
Herbst took on the playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway in 2023 while driving a Front Row Motorsports Ford. He qualified sixth in only his fourth start, led 10 laps, avoided the chaos, and he put himself in the first two rows in the closing laps.
Though he ultimately settled for a ninth-place finish, his second top-10 finish of the season.
Restivo and Fedewa told this author in 2023 that this performance at Talladega settled the young driver. It showed him that he could contend at the top level of NASCAR before he moved up on a full-time basis.
Less than two weeks after this Talladega race, Herbst broke through and won the O'Reilly Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway by a staggering 14.959 seconds.
He put on a clinic at his hometown track and celebrated for the first time at the national level. He also proved to his team and to himself that he could truly win races.
This win made him confident, and it helped break him out of those dark days. It put him on the path to becoming the driver who could better handle these difficult situations.
"He's got a long future, and he's just gonna keep getting better and better because he worked hard," Fedewa said in 2023.
"Now that you get that monkey off your back and a little more confidence... sometimes getting to where you want to go is definitely not easy and when you have to take the hard knocks that he has, it definitely makes you better."
