JOLIET, Ill. — Through the first half of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, Toyota teams have combined to win 11 of 18 races.
RFK Racing team co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski said Friday at Chicagoland Speedway he believes the manufacturer has earned its flowers. But he also sees lessons Ford and Chevrolet can learn from what a rival Original Equipment Manufacturer is accomplishing behind the scenes.
MORE: Chicagoland schedule | Cup standings
With 10 weekly entries from Team Penske, RFK Racing, Front Row Motorsports and Wood Brothers Racing, Ford has combined for just one points-paying win this year, courtesy of Penske’s Ryan Blaney at Phoenix Raceway in March. Ford will get a new body on the race track in 2027 via its Mustang Dark Horse SC, but no body updates can be made until then.
In Keselowski’s opinion, “dramatic” rules changes made in the last decade have altered the NASCAR paradigm, specifically as engineering responsibilities pivoted from the teams to the manufacturers, creating “a tremendous dynamic shift in the sport” triggered after Furniture Row Racing’s alliance with Joe Gibbs Racing led to a 2017 championship followed by a departure from the sport after the 2018 campaign.
“So the rules and all the things behind the scenes got altered and pushed in such a way as to prevent that from possibly happening again, and I think that’s where they are right now,” Keselowski said. “The unintended consequences, whether that was second-order or third-order effect, is you created this stalemate of organizations. And the OEMs all either consciously or subconsciously decided who their favorite was because they had to — or felt like they had to. And I think you’ve seen that now with how the last six or seven seasons have played out where it’s the top organization at each OEM.”
Today, Toyota is excelling above its counterparts, notably through the performance of Joe Gibbs Racing’s four-car operation and an alliance shared with 23XI Racing, sharing 11 wins this year among four drivers. Other manufacturers’ lead programs share alliances, such as Chevrolet’s Hendrick Motorsports with Spire Motorsports and Ford’s Team Penske with Wood Brothers Racing. But those partnerships haven’t produced the same results as Toyota’s.
“What’s become unique, I think, over the last two or three years specifically is — and I’ll give a lot of credit to Toyota for this — is they’ve recognized that that stalemate is not necessarily good for the sport or for them as an OEM,” Keselowski said. “And they’ve done a lot of things to push elite collaboration amongst their top organizations so that they have, for reference, two ‘A’ organizations, rather than an ‘A,’ ‘B’ and ‘C.’ As I’ve seen to date, the other OEMs have not done that, and Toyota is making them pay for that with results on the race track. They deserve credit for that.
“The challenge that I see is: Will the other two OEMs actually react to that? I haven’t seen that at the moment. I think RFK is doing all the things it needs to do to position itself to be successful if that were to happen, particularly in the Ford camp. But at this point we have not seen the level of collaboration at Ford that we see at Toyota, and it creates challenges for the program. And I have not seen from the outside — I’m not inside Chevrolet — the same things there. So we’re having one of these seasons where it looks like Toyota is going to dominate throughout, and there’s a great argument to be made that they’re winning races in the boardroom with really great decision-making.”
RFK Racing and Penske, both of which are three-car operations, sit atop the pecking order in Ford Racing, though Penske has been considered the manufacturer’s most successful outfit with championships in four of the last eight NASCAR Cup Series seasons. If the information among Ford’s top teams could be shared equally the way Keselowski believes it should, he sees a path in which the rising tide could lift Ford’s boats.
“In my mind, at least, I think the burden is on the OEMs and the decision-makers at the highest of levels that want their programs to be successful in NASCAR to react accordingly within the rules,” Keselowski said. “And there’s means and measures to do that. As it works its way specifically into RFK, I think we’ve proven our merit. We have three teams that are in a position that I’m proud of. Are we winning races every week? No. We only have one win this season in the non-points-paying race with the Clash. But we continue to show that we have, I think, the organization to push to that next level, given the right opportunities. And I’m really proud of that.”
The team isn’t going anywhere any time soon, Keselowski said, as he confirmed RFK Racing has a long-term contract in place with Ford Motor Company.
“We’re committed to that. We want to be successful with them,” he said. “We’re hopeful that we can continue to innovate with them to this next level. We’re in a lull right now that we don’t want to be in. Ford doesn’t want to be in the same lull — I feel pretty safe in saying that. The onus is on us to step it up and figure it out.”
