Nobody saw this coming. While the Chevy Camaro is no longer sitting in dealership lots, its legacy has been very much alive every weekend on the racetrack. The car ‘retired’ on a high, winning the Cup Series championship thanks to Kyle Larson’s late surge at Phoenix Raceway, ending Ford’s Next-Gen dominance, and Toyota’s impressive performance throughout the 2025 campaign. Now, the anticipation is at an all-time high for Chevrolet’s 2026 car, and fans recently got a glimpse of the vehicle.

However, it proved to be pretty anticlimactic. While the ‘big reveal’ is expected soon, fans couldn’t help but feel let down by the leaked images had poor quality, making it nearly impossible to decipher what the car actually looked like. Perhaps the ‘accidental leak’ was just a marketing strategy by the bowtie brand to build the anticipation?

A leaked photo of the Chevy body emerges the day before the unveiling

The sky-high expectations come directly from Rick Hendrick, owner of Hendrick Motorsports and longtime champion of the bowtie brand. During a conversation on SiriusXM NASCAR radio this week, Mr. H hinted at what’s coming, saying, “I think Chevrolet is going to make the official announcement Friday. I better not lean into that… I’m excited about it.”

But these leaked images do not do justice to the long-awaited Chevy body. In a series of black and white, extremely pixelated images, the NASCAR community would really need a pair of eagle eyes to be able to tell the differences. Maybe we all need to wait until Friday to find out.

Moreover, Rick Hendrick also admitted that the Chevrolet team hasn’t quite matched the bar set by Ford and Toyota lately. With Ford spending significant time refining the Mustang Dark Horse for competition, Hendrick is hoping the incoming Chevrolet design will help bring the manufacturer back into balance with its rivals.

What the updated NASCAR Chevy will look like is still unknown. GM Authority previously reported that General Motors is developing two new passenger cars for the American market, which has sparked speculation about the possible return of a Chevy sedan, a perfect candidate for NASCAR. The catch, however, is simple.

NASCAR prefers the models used in the sport to be in production, but that’s not always the case. If history is anything to go by, a model’s production status at the time of submission matters. This means that a brand-new, never-sold nameplate is less likely, which means it’s quite possible that the ‘new car’ is simply a revised version of the familiar Camaro body for the Hendrick Motorsports racecar.

GM president Mark Reuss has already described the qualities he believes the future Camaro Chevy embodies, and leaked design studies do not offer glimpses into the direction it could be. These hints keep the possibility of a revived Camaro alive, but none of them guarantee that the car revealed in the future NASCAR announcement will represent the next official chapter of Chevrolet’s iconic pony car. And the fans, who were looking forward to enjoying the leaked photos, have been left disappointed.

NASCAR fans torch the low-resolution leaked images

The fans on Reddit didn’t hold back. The leaked photos of the 2026 Chevrolet NASCAR body sparked instant chaos online. Fans immediately zeroed in on the pixelated mystery blob, with one joking, “Oh, I see. The 2026 car will have fewer pixels.”

Another didn’t hold back either, writing, “They just decided to grab the camera that every mfer ever uses to take pics of aliens I guess.” The comparisons only escalated from there, as someone else chimed in with, “It’s a 1984 DeLorean shot with a low-resolution mall parking lot security camera.” For many, the leak was less a reveal and more an unintentional comedy show.

Others took a more sarcastic route, praising the image the only way they could. One fan deadpanned, “Yes. That looks like a car. Good job Chevy 🫡.” Another quipped about the clarity, specifically, the lack of it, saying, “I’ve seen footage of Ralph Earnhardt in higher resolution.” The jokes kept rolling with someone asking, “Are we sure that isn’t Bigfoot?” Likening the silhouette of the world’s most famously grainy creature.

And the fans were excited about Chevy’s mysterious attempts to hide, well, basically everything. One user pointed out, “They said ‘obscure those rear quarter panels allllll the way!’” capturing everyone’s suspicion that the blur wasn’t entirely accidental. But nothing summed up the collective confusion better than the final punchline: “Is it really a leak if the picture is 2 pixels by 2 pixels?”

If Chevy’s goal was to keep fans guessing, the mission was a massive success and possibly done with the world’s oldest camera, according to the fans. And now all eyes will turn towards the big reveal that hopefully doesn’t disappoint the NASCAR community once again.