Toyotathon might be over, but two of the manufacturer’s NASCAR Cup Series teams have started 2026 off on the right foot.
23XI Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing have arguably been the two best organizations through the first four races of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, and while the campaign is young, there’s plenty of momentum in both shops right now.
After 23XI’s Tyler Reddick won the first three races of the season, Ryan Blaney became the first non-Toyota driver to visit victory lane at Phoenix Raceway. But it was a Toyota driver, JGR’s Christopher Bell, who dominated the race, leading 176 of 312 laps, even though he was unable to chase down Blaney late to seal the deal.
Still, Toyota has been bad fast to kick off 2026, and there’s no reason to think that speed will suddenly vanish.
Reddick has been the face of Toyota’s early-season stomping of the Cup field. He won the first three races of the season at Daytona International Speedway, EchoPark Speedway and Circuit of the Americas before running inside the top 10 all day at Phoenix and finishing eighth.
Through four races, Reddick has a 60-point lead over second-place Blaney in the standings and is the only driver to finish top 10 in all four races this season.
His 23XI teammate Bubba Wallace isn’t far behind, sitting third in the standings with three top-10 finishes. Wallace nearly won at Daytona and Atlanta and finished 11th at COTA before a strong sixth-place run at Phoenix. Riley Herbst even managed a top-10 finish in the Daytona 500.
Bell’s strong Phoenix run moved him up to sixth in the standings, while Denny Hamlin (12th) and Ty Gibbs (15th) are also in the early Chase picture.
With the opening three races of the season coming at a chaotic mix of tracks, Phoenix was the first true indicator of who had what in regard to speed and execution.
It was Toyota that truly showed out in the desert. Bell finished runner-up and led the most laps, while Gibbs led 12 laps and nearly earned his first-career win before finishing fourth.
Hamlin finished fifth, with Wallace and Reddick ending up sixth and eighth and Erik Jones rounding out the top 10 in 10th.
Half of the top 10 at Phoenix was made up by entries from JGR and 23XI.
As the schedule moves forward to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Darlington Raceway and Martinsville Speedway, the results and standings will only continue to shake out and even up. It would be surprising if 23XI and JGR were stopped in their tracks.
Hamlin won the last time the Cup Series raced at Vegas and also won the 2025 spring races at Martinsville and Darlington. He’ll be a favorite for those along with Bell, Reddick and even Wallace, who looks like he could win on any given weekend.
Excluded from the Toyota celebration so far is JGR’s Chase Briscoe, who won three races a season ago but has three DNFs already. Assuming the gremlins infecting the No. 19 team are kicked off the hauler, Briscoe will also be a force up front in the coming weeks. And don’t forget about Gibbs, whose confidence has to be nearing all-time highs after he came oh-so-close to finally snagging a Cup win at Phoenix.
Of course, NASCAR racing can change on a dime, but 23XI and JGR have controlled the 2026 season thus far. A Toyota victory at Vegas would only cement that early-season dominance and likely induce fear up and down the Cup garage.
So far, it’s 23XI and JGR’s world, and we, along with the rest of the Cup garage, are just living in it.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.
Honestly folks, I’m looking at switching back to just the regular WordPress comment system. liking or disliking comments would go away. Same with reporting comments. The built in WordPress system is more basic, but at least it works.
And we’re back to generic built in WordPress comments now. Less fancy, but more likely to actually work.
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Hey, it works! You are a gentleman and a scholar. I will miss the thumbs up and down for my own cynical reasons, but that’s probably not a bad change in the big scheme of thing.
Thanks again Dan. I really enjoy interacting with FS, and I typically do so between tasks at my office desk, so having the desktop comments back makes me smile.
Frontstretch folks, if you are reading this, the comments section is only working via the mobile site. Desktop isn’t showing comments, or allowing comments to be posted. Probably why the number of comments is down.
Hey Daytight, Dan the FS web guy here. I tweaked a couple settings, let me know if that helps any.
Hi Dan, unfortunately the issue persists. Possibly my computer, though I have tried it on both Firefox (my preferred browser) and Edge. Also, comments and interactions (thumbs up and down) seem to have less frequency than usual, so I’m guessing I’m not alone with the issue.
It shows a comment count on desktop, but the comments are not visible. I’m replying here on the mobile site.
Thanks for looking into it!
Ok, I’ll keep looking then. We changed servers before the NASCAR season started and the details change slightly from one setup to another. So it’s possible there’s an option that I’ve missed somewhere in all the things that make FS work.
Thanks Dan (and Kevin), it seems something has changed, as I can now see comments on desktop. But, if I attempt to add a comment via desktop, I get a “Nonce is invalid” error when I click “Post Comment”.
I can comment, but it will not let me like or dislike any comments. It thinks I’m voting for my own comment.