We are four races into the new NASCAR Cup Series season, and it’s all Toyota so far! After Tyler Reddick won the first three races of the season in his No. 45 Toyota Camry XSE for 23XI Racing, Denny Hamlin cruised to Victory Lane at Las Vegas.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver pilots a Toyota Camry, making it four wins out of five races for Toyota drivers this season.
While Bob Pockrass believes it’s a worrying sign for Chevrolet fans, NASCAR veteran Kenny Wallace says the time has not come to press the panic button yet.
Kenny Wallace Tells Chevrolet Fans Not To Panic
While he acknowledged Toyota’s dominance is real, he made clear that hitting the panic button right now would be jumping the gun.
“I think I saw somebody last night say, ‘Should the Chevrolets panic since only Toyotas and one Ford have won?'” Wallace said. “Oh yeah, you got to remind people they remember what they want to. Ryan Blaney, he won Phoenix and that was a Ford.”
Blaney’s win at Phoenix at least gave Ford something to hold onto. But with Toyota taking four of the first five races, the early-season picture belongs to one manufacturer, and everyone else is playing catch-up.
Chevrolet arrived in 2026 with visible changes to the Camaro ZL1 — a more pronounced hood dome, a new front end, reshaped rocker panels.
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All of it designed to find time aerodynamically. None of it has found Victory Lane yet. Across Hendrick, Trackhouse, Kaulig, and Spire, the weekend highlight was Larson starting fifth in Las Vegas. It’s something, but not much.
The standings reflect the gap honestly. Toyota leads with 255 points. Ford sits at 179. Chevrolet is in third place with 173 points, despite running more cars in the Cup garage than any other manufacturer. That last part is what makes the number feel worse than it looks.
Wallace, though, has been around long enough to know that these stretches come and go. He mentioned something a high-level NASCAR official had told him, and urged people not to panic just yet.
“That high-end NASCAR official said, ‘Herman, we don’t have mechanics anymore. We have engineers,'” Wallace recalled. “So it’s up to the engineers at Chevrolet to get those cars faster.”
He also noted that Chase Elliott was running second and closing in on Hamlin late in the Las Vegas race. It’s a sign that Chevrolet isn’t as far off as the results suggest.
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“Chevrolet is going to be back winning here in just a little bit,” Wallace said. “Or Ford. Ford’s getting stronger.”
Chevrolet fans will hope Wallace’s words prove right and that one of their drivers takes the checkered flag at Darlington to make up ground on Toyota.
