NASCAR has three OEMs, and most OEMs have a structure as to which team gets what priority, meaning the flagship team is most likely to be the most competitive as it gets the most manufacturer support.

However, with 23XI Racing's Tyler Reddick getting five wins this season, including three back-to-back wins at the start, Toyota has shown that there is a better way of handling their teams and making sure that the data and strategies are shared at a level where more than one team is competitive. 

Brad Keselowski, RFK Racing's co-owner and driver, was asked during his press meet in Chicagoland about how he looks at the move by Toyota and what he thinks led to it.

On the press conference footage uploaded to YouTube by Cup Scene, Keselowski said, “We’re having one of these seasons where it looks like Toyota’s gonna dominate throughout, and there’s a great argument to be made that they’re winning races in the boardroom, with really great decision-making, and they deserve the credit for that success.”

Keselowski said that from the outside, it looks like Toyota has found a way to push elite collaboration amongst their top organizations, which is a Toyota call, meaning that both JGR and 23XI have almost equal information going into a race. This gives them equal scope of competitiveness.

Keselowski gave a nod to Toyota’s decision and said, “They have two A organizations rather than an A, B, C, as I’ve seen to date; the other OEMs have not done that, and Toyota is making them pay for that with results on the racetrack.”

He was clear that the move from Toyota to strengthen 23XI the way they have makes them a dangerous OEM to deal with because what has become custom for the last few years was the premier team of each OEM running up front and competing. 

With the move that Toyota has made, JGR now has 4 competitive cars while 23XI has 3. Meaning they can negate other competitive teams and ensure that they have the most success this season. 

Keselowski believes Next-Gen regs in place to prevent another Furniture Row

Brad Keselowski has had a drastic evolution in his time in the Cup series. He came in as a hot-headed, aggressive young driver unwilling to give respect unless it was earned, won a title in 2012, and then went on to become an owner-driver for RFK Racing. 

Having been in the Cup series for almost 18 years now, Keselowski has seen a shift in rules and dynamics. At a similar time that Keselowski was coming up, a team was building itself up to compete for the title: Furniture Row Racing. 

During their early days, teams had full control of building their chassis and tweaking things around the engine to extract the most out of that car. But once they withdrew from the sport in 2018, the regulation shift seemed aimed at ensuring it doesn’t happen again. 

In the press conference, Keselowski said, “I think those rules were targeted exactly at Furniture Row and the fact that they came in and they were successful, they spent a lot of money, and they went away, and the dialogue at the time was that's not good, comments that Furniture Row bought a championship. I didn’t feel that way.”

Keselowski believes that this change in regulations has prompted OEMs to hold greater power and be able to approach the team dynamic differently, which currently only Toyota does, hinting that Ford and Chevrolet may have a few things to learn and catch up on. 

Do you think Ford and Chevrolet should make similar decisions to Toyota? Let us know. 

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason