by Patrick Zier | Jul 10, 2026 |
Kyle Larson was doing what he does best Sunday at Chicagoland, shadowing the top Toyotas. He isn’t quite good enough to beat them, but they know he’s there.
This particular Sunday he was running a comfortable third when, all by himself in turn four on the 93rd lap, his car spun as he exited the corner. And Larson couldn’t save it.
Instead, he slid across the wet infield grass, his tires going flat and tearing up the car’s underbody. Cup cars now have an underwing which covers the bottom of the car from the splitter in front to the diffuser in back.
It keeps the air flowing smoothly under the car and has totally changed how teams look at aerodynamics because with the underwing, creating aero doesn’t depend on the shape of the body to produce downforce. Instead, the air rushing under the car creates a vacuum which sucks the car down.
Eventually, Larson was able to get back out on the track, but his day was effectively over and he ended up 34th. “I thought I had a good corner going,” he told reporters after the race, “but a bump just bounced me loose and it was backwards in a hurry.
“I got stuck and when I got out of the grass, I had a flat. It dragged the bottom of the car off and I had no downforce the rest of the day,” Larson said. “Obviously, I made a mistake,” he added.
But why? Why would one of the most talented drivers in NASCAR suddenly lose control of his car when he’s all by himself, there are no mechanical issues and he hasn’t been hit by another car? It has to do with Chevy drivers getting a feel for what the car is doing.
Chevy got a new body in 2026 and, as Chase Elliott pointed out earlier this season, the drivers are all having difficulty telling when the new car has reached its limits. You want to go into, through and out of a corner right on the edge, but you don’t want to go over it. Go over it, and you’re in trouble, like Larson.
Despite the spin at Chicagoland, Larson has proven to be the only driver this year capable of challenging Toyota dominance, the only one who has been able to stand up and compete with Toyota on a consistent basis.
Toyota’s ability to run roughshod over Ford and Chevy is truly remarkable. At Chicagoland Sunday, Toyota’s had seven of the top 10 finishers, the first time in NASCAR history a single manufacturer has ever done that.
And while Elliott and Shane van Gisbergen have won two races each and Daniel Suarez also has a victory along with Ryan Blaney (Ford’s only win this year), none of them have been able to perform at a level high enough to break the Toyota stranglehold.
Including his two wins and using the Old Guy Sport competition index as a guide, Elliott has only been competitive in six of the 16 races and van Gisbergen is only competitive on road courses.
The OGS competition index does not include the three super speedway races run so far because the outcome of those races depends almost entirely on luck and tells you nothing about how a team has performed. But it does show how well Larson is running compared to everybody else trying to catch Toyota.
Heading into Sunday’s race at North Wilkesboro, Larson has 270 points. To put that in perspective, Ford’s four Penske drivers (the Wood brothers car is included in this group because it is built by Penske) and the three drivers for Ford’s other factory team, RFK, have combined for 317 points.
And excluding Hendrick, Chevy’s powerhouse team, the six drivers for Trackhouse and Spire, which also get factory support, have 367 points.
Not only that, but Larson is reasonably competitive with the gold standard in Cup racing, Denny Hamlin. Of the 16 races the OGS competition index has scored thus far this year, Hamlin has won four and finished in the top three four more times.
Larson has only been in the top three four times, but he has done well in some other scoring metrics. For example, Hamlin has scored points in 10 of the 16 races. Larson has scored points in 12. And Hamlin has scored points for leading laps under green in 10 races, Larson 11.
So he’s getting there, and the top Toyotas know it. It’s an old axiom in NASCAR that before you can win, you have to first put yourself in position to win, and Larson has been putting himself in position to win.
Chase Briscoe, who won Sunday’s race at Chicagoland, understands the position he – and Toyota – are in and that the Toyotas need to strike now while they have an edge.
“It (having an advantage over your rivals) goes in ups and downs,” Briscoe commented after his Chicagoland win on NASCAR.com’s website. “A year from now, the Toyotas could be way off and the Chevys and Fords could be unbelievable.
“When you are good, you have to take advantage of it,” Briscoe continued, “especially at the types of tracks where the Toyotas are typically the best, the mile and a halves.
“When you come to a mile and a half, you cannot have a bad day. You need to take advantage of it, because it’s not very often you have a race-winning car and when you have them, you have to try to win,” he emphasized.
JGR team owner Joe Gibbs watched as three of his four cars, Briscoe, Christopher Bell and Hamlin, finished one-two-three at Chicagoland with the fourth, Ty Gibbs, eighth and Michael Jordan’s 23XI entries sandwiched around them. Bubba Wallace was sixth, Corey Heim ninth and Riley Herbst 10th.
“It’s great,” Gibbs said of his team’s and Toyota’s dominance. “I’ve said before that the hardest thing to do is stay up in pro sports. Everybody realizes what great teams we’ve got out there.
“This is the best series in the world for racing cars,” Gibbs declared. “Everybody is working extremely hard. It was a battle today (Sunday) and it was great to get the 19 (Briscoe) across the finish line first.
“We know how hard everybody else is working,” Gibbs continued. “So we know, you know, how competitive this is. One week doesn’t buy you the next week. As a matter of fact, we have been telling everybody at our place ‘hey, let’s work even harder’ because we know everybody else is working so hard.
“It’s really hard to just stay up there and keep performing like this,” Gibbs said. “I think we’ve got great people. I think all four cars, right now, I feel real good when we go to the racetrack. I think we’re capable of winning with all four cars.”
But Gibbs knows you can’t coast no matter how good you are. In NASCAR, they say if you’re not getting better you’re falling behind. And Kyle Larson is coming.
NASCAR NOTES: No race this week. Old Guy Sport does not count super speedway races (Atlanta, Daytona and Talladega) in its standings because the outcome is determined primarily by luck and has little to do with how a team or driver performs.
by Patrick Zier | Jul 5, 2026 |
Josh Berry may finally be getting a break – or not. For most of his career, Berry has been better than the cars he drives, the Wood brothers Ford being the latest example. Denny Hamlin couldn’t win in that car, and neither could anybody else.
But now, it looks like Berry, who will be out of a job next year, may have found a new home – Kaulig Racing. While Kaulig is an afterthought in the Cup series right now, it won’t be next season because Dodge is re-joining NASCAR and has chosen Kaulig to be its flagship team.
If Dodge is successful in getting its Challenger body approved, and it is making good progress on that front, and is able to develop a spec engine to go with it, which is more difficult, then we could see a Dodge in the 2027 Daytona 500 for the first time since 2012.
Already, Stellantis, which owns both Ram trucks and Dodge, has partnered with Kaulig to put five Ram trucks on the track this season. Ram is providing some financial aid, mostly parts and pieces, for the truck operation with Kaulig getting additional sponsors to help out with costs, which are much less than fielding a Cup team.
That’s because all trucks, regardless of manufacturer, use the same engine, which is factory built by Ilmor. Cup cars have hand built engines developed by each manufacturer to ensure maximum performance. Toyota, Ford and Chevy provide them for their teams, who fine tune them before each race.
As for Dodge, Kaulig seems an unlikely choice to build a program around. It is a small, nondescript team with 55 employees which has never been competitive in the cup series, although Kaulig officials say they will add more engineers and technology and grow the workforce as Dodge expands its Cup program.
According to Kaulig officials, their goals and aspirations coincided with what Dodge was looking for and Kaulig saw the chance to become a primary partner with a major manufacturer as an opportunity to improve its Cup program.
It currently has a shop on the RCR complex in Welcome, N.C., and a relationship with Chevy through RCR, although it gets very little corporate help.
Eventually, Kaulig has plans to move off the RCR complex into an independent facility and it will undoubtedly sever its relationship with Chevy to concentrate all its efforts on Dodge.
Right now, Kaulig is keeping its Cup operations with RCR separate from its Ram deal in the truck series. At least initially, it will continue to field two cars in the Cup series, one driven by A.J. Allmendinger, a 44-year-old veteran who is a poor man’s Shane van Gisbergen on road courses – he has three road course wins – and the other driven by, well that’s a good question.
Right now, it’s Ty Dillon, but two things about Dillon. First, he has had a remarkably unspectacular career. This season, he has no wins, no top fives, no top 10s and has led just three laps.
More importantly, he is Richard Childress’s grand son, which shouts Chevy loud and clear and means he will almost certainly be replaced once Kaulig’s switch from Chevy to Dodge is complete.
And that’s where Berry comes in. He is an experienced driver who could give excellent feedback as Kaulig develops the Dodge program, having proven himself as a substitute driver for both Bill Elliott and Alex Bowman at Hendrick.
And while the quality of Kaulig’s operation remains suspect, if it is able to hire the right people for the right jobs and given technical support from Dodge, maybe we’ll see a breakthrough here – for Dodge and Berry.
There’s no question Dodge wants to do this and there’s no question it wants to put a competitive car on the track as quickly as it can. And there’s no question that given a competitive car, Berry can be very competitive. So maybe this works out. For both of them.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Chicago: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Kyle Larson. Last year’s winner at Chicago: No race last year.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Sonoma picks: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Ty Gibbs. Sonoma winner: van Gisbergen. OGS season record: 9-6.
OGS competition index top 10 after 15 races: 1-Hamlin 448 points, 2-Reddick 334, 3-Larson 266, 4-Christopher Bell 233, 5-van Gisbergen 208, 6-Gibbs 207, 7-Chase Elliott 181, 8-Ryan Blaney 157, 9-Chase Briscoe 142, 10-Bubba Wallace 83.
OGS competition index top 10 on intermediate tracks (tracks most similar to Chicago) 1-Hamlin 372, 2-Reddick 232, 3-Bell 132, 4-Larson 125, 5-Elliott 120, 6-Briscoe 68, 7-William Byron 64, 8-Brad Keselowski 63, 9-Daniel Suarez 51, 10-Erik Jones 43.
by Patrick Zier | Jun 27, 2026 |
Ford has never really figured it out. Yes, it won championships in 2022, ’23 and ’24 with the Next Gen car, but that just shows how much of a charade the Cup championship is.
They were hollow victories because the Next Gen car has baffled Ford from the beginning; well, maybe Penske’s Joey Logano deserved to win in 2022 because everybody was going through a learning process and nobody had an edge, but now things have changed – except for Ford. Given time to work on the car, Chevy and Toyota – especially Toyota – have adapted to it.
The Next Gen car is totally different from its predecessors. All the cars are basically the same and NASCAR mandated that almost nothing could be done to the bodies.
That has changed everything, especially when it comes to creating aerodynamic downforce. Before, controlling the flow of air over and around the car and keeping air from getting underneath it was the top priority.
But the Next Gen car changed all that with an underwing, a metal plate that covers the bottom of the car.
Since there was virtually nothing the teams could do to the bodies to improve aero, they concentrated on getting a smooth airflow under the car. Using technology, analytics and simulations, the three major manufacturers looked for anything that would give them an edge, and Ford was at an immediate disadvantage.
That was because while Toyota and Chevy were almost totally focused on NASCAR, Ford was not.
Ford was funding a Formula 1 program and also had an interest in endurance racing, and that seemed to be syphoning resources away from its efforts to improve the Next Gen car. On top of that, Ford’s business model had taken a hit and money was tight.
So, the gap between Toyota and Chevy continued to widen, as the Old Guy Sport competition index clearly demonstrates. The OGS competition index is a better measure of competitiveness than the NASCAR points system because the NASCAR system rewards finishing races while the OGS competition index rewards racing.
And if you look at the OGS competition index, you can see that from the beginning, Ford had its hands full with the Next Gen car, and it has gotten worse in recent years.
For example, looking at the big three in 2024, Chevy’s Hendrick led the OGS competition index with 1,616 points and 10 wins (the OGS competition index does not include Atlanta, Daytona and Talladega because luck determines who does well in those races, not how a team performs).
Trailing Hendrick was Toyota’s Joe Gibbs Racing with 1,518 points and six wins. Penske’s four drivers combined for just 745 points but did record seven victories. While Penske fields cars for only three drivers, The Wood brothers entry is included in the Penske totals because Team Penske prepares the car.
In 2025, JGR’s rapidly improving Toyota team shot to the top with 1,793 points and 11 wins. Hendrick finished with 1,412 points and six wins while Team Penske had 888 points and five wins.
And of course this year, JGR and Michael Jordan’s 23XI have totally blitzed the competition. In just 14 races, JGR already has 937 points and five wins (23XI has four more) while Hendrick has just 532 points and only two wins.
Meanwhile, the Fords have barely made it to the starting line. Team Penske has a measly 209 points and just one win, that by Ryan Blaney. Blaney, the best driver in NASCAR not named Denny Hamlin, has seven of Penske’s 13 victories over the three-year period.
One problem for Ford is that two of its teams, the car driven by Austin Cindric and the Wood brothers entry, contribute almost nothing competitively.
In the Next Gen era, Cindric has three wins but two of them are on super speedways and he is virtually never a factor on NASCAR’s regular tracks and ovals.
The same holds true for the Wood brothers, who have only won one non-super speedway race since 2017, that by Josh Berry at Las Vegas in 2025. The Wood brothers recently fired Berry, but clearly, the problem is much bigger than that because given a good car, Berry has proven he can go to the front.
What is troubling, from a Ford standpoint, is not that there are issues with the car, but that Ford doesn’t seem to be close to fixing them.
“You’re always trying to get better,” Blaney commented on NASCAR’ website. “There’s always things we’re looking at doing to try and be a little better here and there. Obviously, you can’t do any body work, but you can always look at things you’re trying to change.
“Like, did this work a little better here? Can we continue to refine that or work on that path? Sometimes you go down the wrong path, you know?” Blaney continued. “And you learn from that.
“I’m not saying we’ve gone down a wrong path, it’s just we’re continuing to try and figure things out to do the best we can. There are things we can do, just try and refine some stuff.
“A little bit goes a long way in this series,” Blaney said, “so hopefully we can just start piecing together little things and they start to add up.”
Brad Keselowski, who once drove for Penske and is now co-owner of his own team, RFK Racing, thinks poor communication and collaboration between the Ford teams is part of the problem.
RFK gets some help from Ford, but Penske is Ford’s primary partner and information doesn’t necessarily flow back and forth between Ford, Penske and RFK.
And that wasn’t helped by the recent retirement of Pat DiMarco, heavily involved in Ford’s research and development and a fixture in the NASCAR garage dating back to his days working with Roush Racing.
DiMarco was the liaison between NASCAR, Ford and its teams and instrumental in Ford’s NASCAR program, and his retirement exacerbates the company’s communication problem.
This is in sharp contrast to the way the Toyota teams work, as Keselowski pointed out on Amazon Prime after the Michigan race.
“Toyota is one of the fastest, if not the best car, in NASCAR,” Keselowski commented. “They’ve got a lot of power, great aerodynamics and the collaboration they have among JGR, 23XI and, even now, with Legacy is very powerful.
“Those three teams can put together all the best thoughts, all the best practices and learn from each other and then bring the best to the track for their three units,” Keselowski said.
“I don’t think we’re seeing any other manufacturer collaborate at the level Toyota is and they’re getting the success you would expect out of that,” Keselowski concluded.
He may be right. There’s an old saying in NASCAR that if you’re not getting better, you’re falling behind. That simply means that if you’re not constantly trying to improve, people will catch up with you.
And that’s the heart of Ford’s problem. Its not getting better and it is falling behind. Way, way, way behind.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Sonoma: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Ty Gibbs. Last year’s winner at Sonoma: 1-Shane van Gisbergen. Top five at Sonoma last year: 1-van Gisbergen, 2-Chase Briscoe, 3-Chase Elliott, 4-Michael McDowell, 5-Christopher Bell.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Coronado picks: 1-van Gisbergen, 2-Reddick, 3-Gibbs. Coronado winner: Corey Heim. OGS season record, 8-6.
OGS competition index top 10 after 14 races: 1-Denny Hamlin 448 points, 2-Reddick 343, 3-Kyle Larson 245, 4-Bell 223, 5-Elliott 181, 6-Gibbs 163, 7-Ryan Blaney 157, 8-van Gisbergen 133, 9-Briscoe 102, 10-Bubba Wallace 83.
OGS competition index top 10 on road courses (tracks most similar to Sonoma):
1-van Gisbergen 121 points, 2-Reddick 91, 3-Gibbs 61, 4-McDowell 57, 5-Heim 52, 6-Wallace 41, 7-Larson 37, 8-Bell 30, 9-Briscoe 24, 10-Blaney 7.
