Toyota’s first season in Australian Supercars is winding down, but Walkinshaw TWG Racing may already be looking ahead to bigger plans. The team currently runs the GR Supra for Chaz Mostert and Ryan Wood, and is reportedly preparing a third car for the bp Adelaide Grand Final in November, with a NASCAR wildcard entry in the works.
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Multiple reports this week have stated that Ty Gibbs, who drives the No. 54 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing in the NASCAR Cup Series, is the choice for TWG Racing, who are currently fourth in the Supercars Teams’ Championship Standings.
Other options would have been less surprising. Tyler Reddick, who drives a Toyota for 23XI Racing in the Cup Series and is one of NASCAR’s better road-course drivers, would arguably have been a more natural choice than Gibbs, who is only now beginning to shed his reputation as an aggressive and entitled driver. But looking deeper, Gibbs’ performances in 2026 have proved that he’s on course to fulfill the potential the racing community knew he had back in his junior days.
Last weekend, he won his second Cup Series race of the season, winning the Iowa Corn 350. He also won in Bristol earlier this year. Both were ovals, but he’s also been a threat in road courses, having secured pole at Sonoma with a lap time of 1:14.
Gibbs has become increasingly focused on improving his road-course and street-circuit racing. A Supercars wildcard would give him exactly that. Challenging Shane van Gisbergen on his home turf is the goal.
The three-time Supercars champion is the benchmark many young NASCAR stars are now chasing. Austin Cindric made the trip to Adelaide last year. Jesse Love raced in the Super2 round, and Gibbs is now next in line. Van Gisbergen is also expected to be back in Australia for the Adelaide finale, as the NASCAR Cup season ends earlier in November, setting up a direct showdown between the former Supercars champion and one of Toyota’s top young NASCAR stars.
Supercars and the local organisers are both supportive of the plan, which is now awaiting sign-off from the United States. Walkinshaw TWG has the infrastructure to make it happen, with a spare Supra and equipment left over from its recently closed Super2 operation.
“With our international connections, both through our directors and now through the Toyota global family, we are always investigating wildcard opportunities,” the team said in a statement to Speedcafe. “We believe in the strength of them, especially with international star power, but have nothing confirmed or to announce currently.”
The calendar lines up cleanly. NASCAR wraps up at Homestead-Miami on November 6-8. Adelaide runs November 26-29. That is an 18-day gap, enough to travel, prepare, and get up to speed on a street circuit in a completely different car. Toyota, though, is not working this angle alone.
Chevrolet has plans to get Cup Series talent to Supercars
General Motors was reportedly pursuing its own Adelaide wildcard and the primary target was Trackhouse Racing’s Connor Zilisch, who’s currently coming off the back of what’s arguably been his most positive Cup Series weekend of 2026.
Zilisch, who won 10 races in the O’Reilly Series in 2025, already has a direct Supercars connection. Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen, a specialist in road course racing, is his Cup teammate.
Team 18, which became Chevrolet’s factory homologation team this year, has the spare capacity to run an extra entry. And Supercars driver Will Brown confirmed the conversations involving Zilisch were real after visiting the US recently.
“There was also talk about Connor Zilisch maybe doing a wildcard. This was getting thrown around a bit when we were over there. A few people asked us, ‘is Connor actually coming out and doing a wildcard?'” Brown said on the Lucky Dog podcast.
Zilisch, however, has made his own intentions clear. “It won’t happen this year, but hopefully down the road, I want to make something like that happen,” he said. He’s not closing the door, but it’s clear that amidst his rookie Cup Series struggles, both Trackhouse and Chevrolet want him to focus on only NASCAR for now.
South Australian Motor Sport Board CEO Mark Warren has already declared Adelaide’s “ultimate ambition”: NASCAR wildcards from all three manufacturers on the same grid. With Toyota and Chevrolet both moving, that ambition is looking less like a dream and more like a deadline.