Imagine that you’re sitting on your couch, watching your favorite college basketball team in the middle of a heated conference matchup.
The adult beverage is cold, the wings are hot, the arena is full and life could not get any better. Your team goes up early and even takes a lead into halftime.
Then, the game goes on and the score gets closer and closer, until the last five minutes of play.
In those five minutes, your favorite team proceeds to make one of 14 field goal attempts. Heartbreak.
You’ve been there, right? That’s exactly where Toyota is in the NASCAR Cup Series, and not enough people are talking about it.
That statistic isn’t an exaggeration for the sake of analysis, either. Going back 14 races, a Toyota has been parked in victory lane just one time. It might feel like forever ago at this point, but that winning driver was Tyler Reddick, whose playoff and Championship 4 hopes are still very much alive.
Alongside him at the moment is fellow Toyota driver Christopher Bell, who has been a mainstay in the playoffs for a few seasons now, despite consistently coming up short in the end.
The fact of the matter is that it’s not racing poorly. The finishes are consistently high enough, but with such a long victory lane drought, could it have an effect on the drivers’ performance headed into the final round?
It’s apparent that looking back on recent races isn’t going to benefit the Toyota drivers. So it only makes sense to look forward.
First up, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and here’s where Toyota might have its best chance.
Looking back at the race there earlier in the year, Kyle Larson took home the win, but it’s the rest of the finishing order that raises an eyebrow.
Four Toyotas finished inside the top 10: Reddick, Ty Gibbs (fifth), Martin Truex Jr. (seventh) and Denny Hamlin (eighth). It doesn’t take a mathematician to know that two of those Toyota drivers are in the hunt for the championship, a good sign for the manufacturer.
With Christopher Bell winning last year’s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, fans might think he has a great shot to win it this year, and they wouldn’t be wrong.
However, there’s an X-factor in this situation.
Larson is historically dominant at Homestead and with the year he’s had, it’s going to be tough to pick against him. That brings the attention to Martinsville Speedway and Phoenix Raceway.
Of course, Martinsville is a…
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