Joe Gibbs Racing Signs Another Driver for 2025
What’s Happening? Taylor Gray is taking the next step in his NASCAR career in 2025. Wednesday, Joe Gibbs Racing announced that…
Wednesday afternoon, Joe Gibbs Racing announced that Taylor Gray will race the No. 54 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series in 2025. In Gray’s absence, he leaves an opening at Tricon Garage in 2025. So, who will drive the No. 17 Truck next season?
What’s Happening? Taylor Gray is taking the next step in his NASCAR career in 2025. Wednesday, Joe Gibbs Racing announced that…
What’s Happening? The ARCA Menards Series is chock full of talent from all sorts of backgrounds. A major factor in ARCA…
Toni Breidinger already has several starts with Tricon Garage, making her an easy bet for an open ride at Toyota’s primary NASCAR Truck Series team.
Breidinger is a full-time driver in the ARCA Menard’s Series for Venturini Motorsports. This season, Toni has 11 top-tens. However, this is a fall off from her 2023 11-race ARCA schedule in which she scored four top-fives and seven top-tens.
Most fans expected Toni to get more Truck Series starts this season after three races last year. However, Breidinger has just one start this year, and an accident affected the 27th-place run at Daytona in February.
Toni has a real shot at racing for Tricon next year. She is sponsored by Celsius, an energy drink, and Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers and has a decent enough Track record. Regardless, what if Tricon wanted to go with a more experienced option?
With the announcement that Gray was heading to JGR next year, NASCAR fans breathed a sigh of sadness. Many of those fans had hoped that Ryan Truex would get a full-time ride after a two-win part-time season for TRD.
Truex began his part-time Xfinity Series schedule in 2022. At first, people assumed this to be a favor to his brother, TRD driver and NASCAR Cup Series Champion Martin Truex Jr. However, Ryan proved everyone wrong, winning three races in 22 starts over three seasons.
The major factor limiting Ryan to a full-time ride is his age and lack of sponsorship. While he would like to race in the Xfinity Series, perhaps the trucks could give him some form of full-time action. Furthermore, if Tricon wanted to add a veteran to its lineup, Ryan would be a solid bet.
Unfortunately, bringing a driver who lacks sponsorship like Truex is a risk. But if they wanted a veteran, who else could they bring on board?
What’s Happening? Tyler Ankrum was once a high-value prospect in NASCAR. Unfortunately, his time in the Truck Series has been rather…
Ankrum is an interesting case to race for Tricon. At just 23 years old, Ankrum is racing for his fifth team since making his Truck Series debut in 2018. Among this list of teams are several Toyota teams, including Tricon’s previous incarnation, DGR-Crosley.
In fact, Tyler made his name with DGR-Crosley, winning the 2018 NASCAR K&N Pro Series East championship with the team. Ankrum, however, has not been as successful at the Truck Series level.
Fortunately, this year, he has improved tremendously with McAnally Hilgemann Racing. This improvement may be seen as a benefit if he leaves MHR. Ankrum also benefits from sponsorship from LiUNA, which has stuck by his side through all his moves. These moves, however, could be a key factor in his struggles, and if possible, it may be best for Tyler to stay with MHR.
While a reunion is unlikely, with Ankrum’s sponsorship and improving stats, it would be worth Tricon looking into.
William Sawalich took the NASCAR world by storm this year with the young hotshot nine ARCA Menards Series races and his second ARCA Menards Series East championship.
Sawalich padded his ARCA efforts with a part-time Truck Series schedule with Tricon and a yet-to-happen part-time Xfinity Series schedule with JGR. Most fans thought Sawalich was a lock for a JGR Xfinity Series ride, and while that still might be on the table, perhaps Toyota isn’t hot-shotting his development like some thought they would.
William has struggled for Tricon this year, with the only high point being his pole at Talladega this month. Last season, Sawalich had three top tens in six starts for Tricon. Perhaps this minor falloff is steering Sawlaich to Trucks rather than Xfinity.
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Another race weekend in the books. While Ryan Blaney battled back from several pit road setbacks to win his second straight race at Phoenix, other drivers were much to be desired. It was a big win for Penske but for several others, they leave the first “real” race of the season scratching their head with a lot that they need to figure out. Here are the biggest losers of NASCAR’s Spring 2026 Phoenix race weekend.
I’m afraid that this is starting to be habitual. Another race weekend at RCR for Kyle Busch, another terrible result. Well, the finish wasn’t exactly awful. While 17th is hardly up to Kyle’s standards, it’s about as good as it gets anymore for the two-time champion who hasn’t won a race in nearly a hundred starts.
To start things off, there was a reason to be cautiously optimistic about the future of that RCR No. 8 Chevy. New crew chief. Personnel changes. A new Chevy body. He even scored the pole for the 68th running of the Daytona 500 last month. But, since then, it has been a sharp slope downward. He was mostly a non-factor in the first three races. And, today, it seemed like the No. 8 Chevy was out to lunch. They unloaded slow. They qualified in the back of the pack. And, before Stage 1 even ended, Kyle was running 34th with no apparent issues and went a lap down to leader Ryan Blaney. To add insult to injury, Kyle Bush had a tire go down on him three times today. More than any other driver. It appears to be back to the drawing board for team No. 8.
You could say that the Hendrick No. 48 team had a rough weekend in general. But I think it would be more accurate to say that the entire start to 2026 has been catastrophic. Heading into today’s race, even with Bowman starting the first three races of the season, the No. 48 team was 36th in points, last among all full-time drivers. Even Cody Ware was ahead of him. If that’s not bad, I don’t know what is.
To rub salt in the wound, their driver missed today at Phoenix due to showing symptoms of vertigo. So, Anthony Alfredo was into sub and…it went about as well as you’d expect. He went a lap down early and never recovered. He got caught up in the incident involving Joey Logano and DNF’d. Officially, they scored a 33rd finishing position. This is the worst start Bowman could ever imagine, considering that he’s in a contract year.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’ve lost my marbles. “Come on, dude! Penske just swept the weekend! How can they be losers?” Hear me out. Let’s start first with the two other Penske drivers, shall we? Joey Logano caused not one, but two multi-car pileups, one involving his Penske teammate, Austin Cindric. Cars were utterly destroyed. Before that, both Cindric and Logano were running solidly in the top 10.
So, it’s not for a lack of speed that they make our Biggest Losers list. The reason they’re listed here is that a lot of their problems today, if not all of them, were self-inflicted. Logano was driving sloppily and that took out Cindric. And even race winner Ryan Blaney almost lost this race on pit road numerous times. Rookie mistakes by the pit crew constantly had him charging from behind. Pit road penalties. He was like a yo-yo going back and forth throughout the field. What saved him in the end was that, on that last restart, Blaney took two tires and Christopher Bell took 4. If that had not happened, it is extremely possible that Blaney ultimately would have lost the race and it would have been because of their numerous mistakes in the pits.
They got lucky this week. They probably won’t get that lucky again. They need to clean up those nagging, senseless mistakes.
Ole, Danny boy. If Alex Bowman’s seat is the hottest in the series, Daniel Suarez has to be the second hottest in the garage. That No. 7 car has been a revolving door of drivers for the last several years and it looks like Suarez is shaping up to be Spire’s latest victim. It’s the same old story with the team: they show impressive speed in qualifying and even early on in the race. But rarely do they ever put a full race together. That criticism isn’t just for Suarez, it applies to the team across the board.
But Carson Hocevar is the team’s golden child. He’s not going anywhere. And the team seems pretty high on Michael McDowell at the moment. That leaves Suarez looking like the odd man out, a seat-warmer, if you will. He needs to perform. And, he’s done well to start, admittedly. But he qualified 5th for today’s race. He even earned a few stage points in the opening stage. Then, he faltered and left the race with an unceremonious whimper. Ultimately, after he was no longer a factor, he was caught up in a mid-race wreck. He finished 30th. That’s a tough pill to swallow for the Mexican-born driver. If he wants to keep his ride next year, he needs to show stark improvement in the coming weeks. I have a strong feeling that that ride is about to be a highly sought-after commodity once silly season rolls around.
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The first checkered flag of the 2026 rendition of the NASCAR West Coast Swing (as abbreviated as it is) has officially flown. It was an exciting race, full of close, tight-cornered racing, a plethora of tire issues littered throughout, and a couple of heartbreaking, hard hits. Surviving it all was Ryan Blaney, who captured the flag in the Straight Talk 500 at Phoenix Raceway. He survived pit road mishaps and passed a total of 49 cars to win the race today. It marks his 18th career victory, sweeping the weekend for Team Penske. So, for Blaney and Team Penske, the race was the highest of highs. Not everyone escaped unscathed, though. Here are the key takeaways from NASCAR’s spring date at Phoenix.
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Following a relatively clean first stage, Stage number 2 and beyond was littered with cautions. Most of these cautions were a result of tires going down after only about 20 laps or so of use. But the caution on Lao 216 was purely driver error. Joey Logano, who was running 7th at the time, made a move down on the apron approaching the finish line. Chaos ensued. Here’s what happened.
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