Toyota Locked Out the Top Three for a Title Race It Can Barely Win

Toyota drivers will start first, second and third in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and the one who sits on the pole is not even eligible for the title.

Chase Briscoe put the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Camry XSE on the pole on Saturday, November 7, with a lap of 166.687 mph in 32.396 seconds, and his teammate Denny Hamlin qualified second in the No. 11, just 0.017 second slower. Tyler Reddick made it a Toyota sweep of the top three in the No. 45 23XI Racing entry. Points leader Kyle Larson will start fourth in the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, with Christopher Bell, the last of the three drivers still in the title hunt, sixth in the No. 20 Toyota.

The order of the grid and the order of the standings do not line up. According to the NASCAR Wire Service report carried by Jayski, Larson leads Bell by 67 points and Hamlin by 70, and he needs only to finish eighth or better to clinch a third series title. Both Gibbs drivers spent the week acknowledging the long odds. Briscoe, who won three races this year, is fourth in the standings but is not eligible for the title, so his pole is for the race win alone.

The pole was Briscoe’s second of the season after Talladega three weeks ago, and Toyota’s own notes from his media session call it the brand’s third 1-2-3 qualifying sweep of 2026 after Las Vegas and Kansas in the spring. It was also the third time in the last four Homestead races that Toyotas have filled the first three spots on the grid. Briscoe was careful not to read too much into it. "I feel confident we can contend, but I wouldn’t say I was the dominant car," he said, adding that the car would feel like "a totally different race car" once the track heated up on Sunday afternoon. He said he and Hamlin had not discussed any arrangement for the start despite being about 70 points apart, and that he did not expect a team directive beyond racing. His own goal, with the title out of reach, is to finish second in the standings, which he said matters for the team’s earnings.

Hamlin, a three-time Homestead winner, was honored before qualifying for his series-high six poles this season, the most he has taken in a single year. Larson, who won the last Cup race at Homestead in March 2025, said his Chevrolet was better than his lap showed. "We qualified well and it’s a long race," he said. "There’s going to be fast guys coming from behind too so just hoping we can stay in the top-10 all day." Austin Cindric qualified fifth for Team Penske, with Chase Elliott, William Byron, Ryan Blaney and Daniel Suarez completing the top 10. Further back, Toyota’s Bubba Wallace will start 18th and Ty Gibbs 20th, according to the Speedway Digest lineup. Brad Keselowski, making his last full-time start for RFK Racing, spun into the inside wall off Turn 4 on his qualifying lap and will start last in the 40-car field.

Toyota has already clinched the Cup Series manufacturers’ championship, its fourth, on the strength of 18 wins this season, so Sunday is about the drivers’ trophy only. The race starts at 3 p.m. Eastern on NBC, with MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio carrying it.

The Toyota Report Take

Three Camrys at the front of the grid is exactly the kind of statement Toyota wanted to make at the finale, and exactly the kind of statement that will ring hollow if Larson cruises to eighth place and takes the trophy home. The points system did its work over the whole season, and a 67-point cushion is the reward for a year Larson controlled.

Still, the grid tells you something true. Toyota built the fastest cars in the field this year, won more races than anyone, and will start Sunday with its contenders in position to win the race outright. If Bell or Hamlin pulls it off, it will come from the front, not from a miracle, and that is the only way a 67-point deficit ever gets closed.

More on the Camry

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