For decades, NASCAR’s biggest competitive battles were defined by what happened at the racetrack. Engineers searched for speed inside their own race shops, crew chiefs made split-second strategy calls on pit road, and drivers settled everything behind the wheel on Sundays.
But that formula has fundamentally changed in the Next Gen era. Today, some of the sport’s most important victories are being decided long before the green flag waves, in boardrooms where manufacturers coordinate engineering, data sharing, and technical collaboration among their teams.
That’s one of the defining characteristics of modern Formula 1. While the drivers remain the faces of the sport, manufacturers and factory-backed organizations play an enormous role in determining who ultimately fights for championships.
Development programs, engineering departments, technical partnerships, and data sharing often create advantages long before the cars ever line up on the grid. According to the 2012 NASCAR Cup Champion, Brad Keselowski, NASCAR’s Next Gen era has started moving in a similar direction.
Brad Keselowski breaks down why Toyota looks unbeatable this NASCAR season
Speaking at Chicagoland Speedway, the RFK Racing co-owner, Brad Keselowski, opened up about the topic and explained that NASCAR’s Next Gen car dramatically shifted the balance of engineering responsibility.
In previous eras, individual organizations could gain a competitive edge by outpacing their rivals in development. However, on the current platform, many of those engineering freedoms have been standardized, placing far greater emphasis on the role of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs): Toyota, Ford, and Chevrolet.
As a result, manufacturers have become increasingly influential in determining how their affiliated teams work together, exchange information, and maximize collective performance.
Keselowski believes that change has altered the way races and championships are won. In his view, many of the biggest competitive advantages are established months before race weekend through strategic planning and collaboration, unlike in previous times, when they were discovered during practice or qualifying.
Many races are effectively won before teams ever arrive at the racetrack, with elite decision-making by team owners and manufacturers playing a central role.
The current competitive landscape appears to support that argument. For example, this season, through the first 18 races of the NASCAR Cup Series season, Toyota drivers have won 11 races, while Ford teams have managed just one points-paying win.
Such a disparity suggests that Toyota’s success may stem from more than simply having fast race cars. It points toward a system in which organizational cooperation has become just as valuable as driver talent or race-day execution.
Keselowski traced the roots of that shift back to NASCAR’s effort to reduce costs with the introduction of the Next Gen car. While the standardized platform succeeded in limiting expensive engineering wars, he believes it also created unintended consequences by making it significantly harder for independent organizations to compete against the sport’s largest alliances.
He even suggested that the rules effectively prevented another story like Furniture Row Racing’s 2017 championship run, when a relatively independent organization managed to defeat NASCAR’s established powerhouses through its own engineering strength.
Toyota recognized the changing environment faster than anyone else, and the manufacturer cultivated close collaboration between multiple elite teams, creating “two A organizations” working together instead of one flagship team carrying the manufacturer.
That approach allows engineering knowledge, simulation data, and technical resources to flow more efficiently across Toyota’s top operations, producing stronger results on the racetrack.
Keselowski argued that if Ford hopes to close the gap, organizations like his own team, RFK Racing, and Team Penske will need to collaborate at a similarly high level because, at the moment, he only sees Toyota executing that strategy successfully.
However, not everyone inside Toyota agrees with that interpretation. Denny Hamlin, who competes for Joe Gibbs Racing while also co-owning 23XI Racing, believes Toyota’s success has less to do with manufacturer-driven strategy and more to do with smart business decisions made by the teams themselves.
While acknowledging the benefits of collaboration, Hamlin rejected the idea that Toyota provides fundamentally different support compared to Ford or Chevrolet.
Instead, he pointed to the long-standing alliance between Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI Racing as the primary reason both organizations continue to perform at a high level.
According to Hamlin, 23XI intentionally partnered with Joe Gibbs Racing to accelerate the team’s development and reduce the need to duplicate engineering efforts.
Although the partnership involves financial investment, he emphasized that both organizations benefit by sharing ideas, engineering resources, and technical expertise generated by multiple drivers, crew chiefs, and engineers.
Hamlin also stressed that these relationships are not dictated by Toyota. Instead, they are voluntary alliances formed because they make sound business sense. From his perspective, any manufacturer could support similar arrangements if its affiliated organizations chose to pursue them.
Interestingly, the two veterans may not disagree as much as it initially appears. Both acknowledge that collaboration has become one of the most valuable competitive assets in NASCAR’s Next Gen era. Their difference lies in where they assign credit.
Keselowski sees Toyota as the architect of an environment that encourages elite-level cooperation across its premier teams, while Hamlin believes successful organizations independently chose partnerships that naturally strengthened their competitiveness.
That doesn’t mean NASCAR has suddenly become Formula 1. Teams still race under different ownership, drivers remain far more capable of influencing outcomes, and the spec-heavy Next Gen car limits many areas of technical development that define F1.
However, like Formula 1, NASCAR is increasingly rewarding organizations that build the strongest technical alliances behind the scenes.
Regardless of which explanation carries more weight, the results are difficult to ignore. Toyota’s 11 wins through the opening 18 races highlight how important collaboration has become in modern NASCAR, a significant evolution from the sport Keselowski entered nearly two decades ago, when competitive breakthroughs were often born inside individual race shops.