The 2022 season, which starts this weekend, marks the Camry’s 16th season in NASCAR auto racing.
Toyota announced its intention to compete in NASCAR’s Cup and Busch (now Xfinity) Series for the 2007 season. The automaker even revealed a NASCAR stock car sporting bodywork resembling that of a 2006 Toyota Camry. This look, however, never made its way to the track as Toyota introduced a new Camry for the 2007 model year and instead imprinted that model’s styling onto the bodywork of the NASCAR racers it fielded.
The 2007 season was an odd one for NASCAR’s Cup Series. Credit the strange decision by NASCAR to race both its outgoing fourth-generation and newer fifth-generation cars throughout the season. The latter, dubbed “The Car of Tomorrow”, was notably safer than the preceding fourth-gen cars, a chassis with roots to the 1992 season.Regardless, Toyota’s freshman year racing results in the Cup Series weren’t particularly memorable, with not one of the seven cars it fielded taking the checkered flag throughout the 2007 season. That said, the Camry did earn a couple of top-10 finishes, with driver Dave Blaney even managing a podium spot by way of a third-place finish at Talladega in October.
Toyota’s sophomore outing in the Cup Series made for a far more successful season for the automaker. Although the 2008 season’s champion—Jimmie Johnson—drove a Chevrolet (Chevy also takes the Manufacturer’s Championship), the series still saw a number of Toyota’s take the podium, with Camrys finishing first at the likes of Atlanta, Martinsville, Talladega, Darlington, Dover, Sonoma, Daytona, Chicago, and Watkins Glen.
Toyota continued to prove itself a worthy foe to its fellow Cup Series manufacturers in 2009: Chevrolet, Dodge, and Ford. Despite multiple first-place finishes, including at the season finale race in Homestead, the company still failed to achieve championship status by way of one of its drivers or as a manufacturer (once again, Jimmie Johnson and Chevrolet come out on top as the season’s champion driver and manufacturer, respectively).
The 2010 season marked the return of the spoiler to NASCAR racers. Blame the prior rear wing’s ability to lift the car it was attached to in a wreck, as happened to Carl Edwards’ Ford Fusion at Talladega during the previous year’s running of the Aaron’s 499. The spoiler’s reinstatement had little effect on Chevrolet or Jimmie Johnson, which again took the manufacturer’s and driver’s championships. That said, Toyota and Toyota driver Denny Hamlin, earned enough points to claim silver in both the manufacturer’s and driver’s championships.
While Toyota entered the 2011 season racing Camry’s with decor that mimicked the 2011 model-year sedan, the brand updated its race cars’ styling to correspond with that of the new 2012 Camry later in the season. The refreshed looks do little for Toyota’s Cup Series racers, which fail to have the same success in 2011 as they did in 2010.
Toyota got one-step closer to netting the Cup Series crown in 2012, with driver Clint Bowyer falling 39 points shy of the top spot (it was ultimately claimed by Dodge’s Brad Keselowski). Sure, some might commend Bowyer’s second-place finish, but as Reese Bobby famously said, “if you ain’t first, you’re last.”
NASCAR’s sixth-generation race cars made their Cup Series debut in 2013. The cars featured safety and weight enhancements relative to the outgoing fifth-gen models. More importantly, NASCAR allowed each manufacturer to fit their cars with distinct bodywork. As such, the Camrys fielded by Toyota looked far more like their production counterpart than any NASCAR Camry before it (likewise, the competing Chevrolet SS and Ford Fusion featured styling that more closely resembled their road-legal kin).
Toyota struggled in 2014 Cup Series racing, as the automaker managed just two wins throughout the season. No surprise, Toyota finished last in the manufacturer’s championship, with Chevy and Ford finishing in first and second, respectively.
Toyota updated its NASCAR Camrys with bodywork and graphics to better match the styling of the refreshed 2015 Camry sedan. More importantly, the 2015 Cup Series season saw Kyle Busch take his M&M’s-sponsored Camry racer to the top spot in the driver’s championship. That’s right, nine years after it first entered the Cup Series, Toyota finally witnessed one of its race cars take a driver to the championship podium.
Chevrolet’s 13-year reign as manufacturer’s champion ended in 2016, with Toyota usurping the bow-tie brand from its place long-held at the top. Back-to-back driver’s championships eluded Toyota, though, as Kyle Busch finished behind Joey Logano and Jimmie Johnson, respectively—the former driving for Ford, the latter for Chevrolet.
Call 2017 the season of Toyota, because the automaker absolutely dominated NASCAR’s Cup Series. Not only did Toyota drivers Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch take the top two spots in the driver’s championship, but the automaker managed to take gold in the manufacturer’s championship. On top of this, the 2017 Cup Series Camry welcomed new bodywork to resemble the latest generation of its road-going counterpart: the 2018 Toyota Camry sedan.
Toyota failed to repeat its 2017 Cup Series success in 2018. That said, the Camry’s performance was far from underwhelming. In fact, the model collected more than a dozen wins for Toyota throughout the season. It also managed to take Martin Truex Jr to second place in the driver’s championship.
Toyota returned to top form in 2019, with the automaker taking the top spot in the manufacturer’s championship and its drivers Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. netting gold and silver, respectively, in the driver’s championship. This happened in spite of the fact that 22 of the season’s 36 races were affected by new rules that brought engine output down from 750 horsepower to 550 horses.
Toyota’s 2020 Cup Series season started off strong courtesy of Denny Hamlin’s win at the Daytona 500. Alas, the company’s luck soon faded. Hamlin ultimately finished fourth in the driver’s championship, with Ford and Chevy drivers taking the top three spots. While Toyota topped Chevy for second-place in the manufacturer’s championship, the brand’s nine Cup Series wins fell far short of the 18 checkered flags Ford drivers took throughout the 2020 season.
Toyota fell short of the Cup Series championship in 2021. Still, Camry drivers Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin earned the second and third spots in the driver’s championship. Chevy’s Kyle Larson, meanwhile, took the top spot.
The 2022 Cup Series marks the debut of NASCAR’s seventh-generation stock car. The latest NASCAR racer features many state-of-the-art (at least by NASCAR standards) engineering technologies. This includes the likes of an independent rear suspension, a five-speed sequential gearbox, and 18-inch wheels with a single center-locking lug nut. These pieces replace the outgoing car’s live rear axle, four-speed manual transmission, and five-lug 15-inch wheels. Sure, NASCAR’s seventh-gen racer is not the technological tour de force that a Formula 1 car is, but it nevertheless embraces modernity in a way that was sorely lacking from the motorsport. Only time will tell if Toyota, Ford, or Chevrolet finds success with this new car over the course of the NASCAR Cup Series’s 2022 season.
Keyword: Toyota Camry in NASCAR: A Decade and a Half of Turning Left