Toyota still eying Cup Series driver title after securing OEM title

Toyota Racing Development has checked one box off the list this season in the NASCAR Cup Series and has three races to try to accomplish the second.

The first accomplishment: the manufacturer’s championship. It was sealed last weekend at Phoenix Raceway, thanks to Tyler Reddick’s sixth win of the season. Toyota had not claimed the manufacturer’s championship since 2019.

“It means a lot,” Tyler Gibbs, the president of TRD U.S.A. “It means that we’ve been consistent all year, that we’ve won races with multiple drivers and teams, and it means that we’ve competed very, very well in those races we didn’t win.”

Toyota drivers have combined for 18 victories in 33 races, the most in a single season since 2019, when the manufacturer won 19 races. In eight of the other 15 races, a Toyota driver finished second.

The manufacturer standings are calculated by taking the driver with the most points per manufacturer in each race. For example, Tyler Reddick was Toyota’s highest-scoring driver at Phoenix, scoring 55 points with the win. With three races to go, Toyota leads Chevrolet by 219 points.

It is their fourth overall in the series.

“When you think about that as a body of work,” said Gibbs, “and the role that TRD plays as far as building the engines, the technical support, all the different elements that little TRD, within the big Toyota picture, plays, I think it means a lot to us. I’m in California … and it’s the first time I’ve been in the office, and everybody is ecstatic about winning the manufacturer’s championship, because again, it’s a bigger body of work, not one piece that goes all the way to the end.

“Don’t get me wrong, we would certainly like to have a driver’s championship, and we’re going to give it our very best to get there. Certainly, that is a huge piece, and a lot of media and exposure comes with that. But for us, [the manufacturer’s championship] really validates the work we’ve put in all year across all the cars and drivers.”

A driver’s championship would be the second box to check off by season’s end. Like the manufacturer’s title, Toyota's last was in 2019, with the late Kyle Busch. Busch has won two of Toyota's three driver’s titles.

Toyota still has a very good shot at winning the driver’s championship. In fact, they have four chances between Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe, Denny Hamlin, and Tyler Reddick. All four drivers are seventh or better in the standings and are within one race of the lead. Hamlin led the points through the first two Chase races, but Larson has held on ever since.

“We’ve thought about it, and the Chevy guys essentially have one bullet at this point in the season,” Gibbs said. “Obviously, there are other guys in the Chase that anything can happen; they’re not eliminated, but it’s practically very, very difficult. If Larson has another day like he had at Phoenix, they’re going to really struggle to have a real opportunity at a championship. We’ve got multiple bullets, and they’re taking each other’s lunch some days, and that’s a challenge. But I think from our side, having more bullets is better than having fewer bullets.”

Bell moved to second in the standings after Phoenix and is within five of Larson. Briscoe, now third, is 24 points back. Hamlin is 31 points back in fourth place. As for Reddick, last weekend's win put him back mathematically in the hunt, 56 points out, but he’ll still need help from the competition and race wins.

Briscoe has won two races in the Chase, cutting 99 points off the deficit over the last three weeks. One of those wins, at Charlotte Motor Speedway at the expense of Bell, kept Bell from 20 points he could have used. Hence Gibbs mentioning they are taking each other’s lunch at times.

But that’s the nature of the battle.

“It may neutralize our effort to put that one [driver] in the championship seat at the end of Homestead, but our job on the TRD, Toyota side is to maximize our opportunity, and that comes with the most seats,” said Gibbs. “We want the guys to work together until the last 10, 15, 20 laps and then have at it. I think we’ve seen our guys race very, very respectfully with each other; they’ve not put each other in bad spots, and all four of them, at this point, have a realistic shot at the championship.

“We’re going to take the numbers even if it means on occasion they hurt each other a little bit.”

As for the final three races, Briscoe is the defending winner at Talladega Superspeedway. A Toyota driver last won at Martinsville Speedway in the spring of 2025 (Hamlin) and at Homestead-Miami Speedway in the fall of 2024 (Reddick).