After nine races in the 2026 season, Toyota has already won seven of them. What’s more interesting is that five out of these seven wins come from a team that was trailing in the shadows of Joe Gibbs Racing a few years ago. This amazing performance and continued dominance are the reasons why Kevin Harvick believes the other two NASCAR OEMs should start taking notes from Toyota.

Kevin Harvick reveals the secret behind Toyota’s success

For an ‘outsider’ OEM, Toyota has taken some really long strides in the 2026 season. It took them seven years to bring back the dominance they once held with Kyle Busch and Joe Gibbs Racing, while GM and Ford are still struggling to get to grips with the 2026 season.

Kevin Harvick believes he has the perfect answer to this dilemma. “But the unique part about this whole scenario is those guys and the information sharing and the cars coming from Joe Gibbs Racing.

“The unique part is going to be the little details that keep coming from, okay, well, why did Denny Hamlin run so well? Okay, well, why is Tyler Reddick so good? Okay, why did Ty Gibbs run so good? And then they keep stacking these little details of things that each team finds.”

In the world of NASCAR, data is king. Small details that stack up every weekend eventually end up piling into a mountain of crucial information. For a manufacturer like Toyota that focuses its resources on a very small number of teams, this data comes in clutch every weekend.

Let’s have a look at the NASCAR Cup Series standings for Toyota. They have five cars in the top 10. Their victorious drivers, Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin, are leading the series standings. Meanwhile, Ty Gibbs, Christopher Bell, and Bubba Wallace are bringing regular top-10 finishes.

On weekends when Tyler Reddick leads the way, the other teams end up benefiting from his setup. On the weekends where the JGR cars are the pace setters, the 23XI cars get to learn. This shared channel of data and performance in Toyota and TRD helps the team maintain consistency.

Denny Hamlin has also confirmed by saying that both teams are “always privy” to what the other is doing, noting that 23XI is paying for full technical access and feeding its own findings back into the system. “Toyota clustering” during race weekends, teammates filling up the front rows in qualifying, or multiple cars running in the top 10, is also commonplace, which is a direct result of shared baselines.

And the scale of that system matters: JGR alone is a four-car operation that produced 13 race wins in 2025, returning major continuity in driver–crew chief pairings into 2026, meaning continuity in baseline setups and accumulated knowledge instead of reset cycles.

“Yeah, they’re the only ones getting better. They’re the only ones, right? Like, and they’re taking really good race cars and just keep fine-tuning them with these little things that the resources and where they’re racing at in the pack at the front all racing for the win. Like they’re just up there playing their own game,” Harvick hence added.

But there is another aspect of the 2026 NASCAR season that bears a haunting resemblance to earlier failures in the Chevy camp.

Is Rick Hendrick heading towards the same pit of despair as others?

Sure, Chevy might be working with eight different teams and fielding nearly 20+ cars, but the disparity among them is vast. Just look at the performance statistics for Chevy this year. Hendrick Motorsports is leading the way as always. But Kaulig Racing, Trackhouse Racing, and Richard Childress Racing stay at the back of the race. Spire Motorsports occasionally rises to the top but quickly settles back into the midpack.

Denny Hamlin called this out in his podcast, saying, “When I look at Hendrick, and obviously, they are the flagship Chevy team, but then, like the other teams that get the ‘same information,’ the same is it’s like way off, like last. So, it’s crazy. It almost seems like you guys are better off not getting the ‘same information.”

This segregation between the teams can be detrimental to Chevy. In this scenario, only Rick Hendrick and his team are the ones with valuable information since they are the leaders every weekend.

However, currently, they are facing some stagnation – going from setting standards to chasing them. Kyle Larson has remained winless for more than 30 races at this point. The likes of Chase Elliott and William Byron, who were regular winners in the Cup Series, are lagging behind the pack. GM’s partnership can only last so long for them. After all, we have seen teams that were previously competitive, like Trackhouse and RCR, lose that edge over time.

In fact, Rick Hendrick’s first win this season came right as March was ending, in part because of a new Camaro body necessitating setup adjustments. Hendrick shared a message back then, saying, ‘This is a marathon, not a 10K race. We’re in it for the long run. Regardless of the way it starts, it’s about the way it finishes.”

However, when you have set expectations with 1-2-3 finishes, the slightest downfall becomes magnified.