Martin Truex Jr. Kyle Busch 2022 NASCAR Cup Series
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A fresh car hasn't meant a fresh start for Toyota in the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series. A manufacturer that put two teams into the Championship 4 last season with Joe Gibbs Racing suddenly can't buy a break over the first three weeks, watching another potential win slip away at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

"Wasn't meant to be," said Kyle Busch, who was in control of the race until a late caution flag. "Not our day. See you next week."

It's not that simple for a six-car Camry group that had the cards at Las Vegas yet found themselves going bust at the blackjack table. This track was supposed to fix it; Denny Hamlin hit the jackpot here, winning last fall and it's a hometown race for Busch. Instead, he spent much of the weekend fighting from behind, forced to start at the rear after a practice crash destroyed his primary car.

Busch needed teammate Denny Hamlin's backup just to race Sunday, a victim of the parts shortage hammering NASCAR teams with the Next Gen chassis. To their credit, all four of JGR's teams pitched in the rebuild only to fall victim to circumstances outside their control: luck.

Early in the race, Austin Dillon slowed in front of Busch, causing an evasive spin that messed up the No. 18's front bumper. Busch then hit the wall a few times and struggled with track position in a march up the field from 37th. He overcame it all, leading 40 of the final 47 laps and fighting teammate Martin Truex Jr. for the win until a hard wreck by Erik Jones with three laps left.

Suddenly, Busch and Truex's battle was toast.

"I guess we gotta pit, huh?" Truex said nervously on the radio to crew chief James Small.

"Yeah," Small said. "There's 41 laps on tires."

But the call for the Toyota drivers was four fresh Goodyears to the Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets' two, leaving Busch and Truex fourth and sixth for the final restart. It was too far back to give them a chance against eventual winner Alex Bowman in overtime.

It's just the latest misstep in a group haunted by their own missteps. Hamlin killed the transaxle Sunday after downshifting by accident heading to pit road; muscle memory bit him as shifters are set up differently in the Next Gen car (shifting up can actually put you in reverse if you do it wrong). That came after he ran over an air hose, erasing track position the No. 11 never regained after leading.

"We had the best car today," Hamlin claimed. "Just got back there and was working our way forward and made mistakes."

Now, he leaves Las Vegas without a top-10 finish so far this year. Hamlin's JGR teammates were at least able to recover somewhat from their problems, Truex wound up eighth after surviving a tire that left his pit box and caused a mid-race penalty. Pole sitter Christopher Bell suffered through slow stops, his own tire issues and a spin on the backstretch to somehow nurse his car home in 10th.

Further back, Bubba Wallace saw a top-15 finish erased when Jones' spinning car came up the racetrack in front of him. Sacrificing his car to the inside wall was the only way to avoid a terrifying incident for both drivers.

That left Kurt Busch, Wallace's new teammate at 23XI Racing, as the only one avoiding trouble, increasing his season-long position differential to +44 with a 13th-place finish. But how much better off would Busch's team be if they started the weekend better? Or passing pre-race inspection at Auto Club Speedway last week? Three straight failures had them starting the race with a pass-through penalty.

It's those little things eating at Toyota in a year where every point matters. In a different world, rookie Austin Cindric would have missed his block at the Daytona 500 and Wallace would have won.

"What could have been, right?" Wallace said after falling inches short of that Daytona victory. "Sucks when you're that close."

As it stands, Wallace's second and Busch's fourth on Sunday are the only two Toyota top-5 finishes. Compare that to Chevrolet's eight, including two early wins for HMS and you can see why JGR feels they're behind in the Cup Series.

The only upside thus far was a Saturday NASCAR Xfinity Series win by Ty Gibbs, running his first full-time season in that division. But even that has the ability to cause chaos, Gibbs' natural ascension to Cup eventually forcing a driver change at JGR due to NASCAR's four-team limit. Whichever driver among Bell, Busch, Truex and Hamlin struggles the most will be the center of the rumor mill heading into the summer.

It's up TRD President David Wilson to keep this group on track. The manufacturer has consistently invested in quality, not quantity, leaving them one-third the size of Ford or Chevrolet. It's a small group navigating tough waters with so many cars destroyed early as drivers struggle to handle the Next Gen.

"We have to temper ourselves as to not… not to overreach to any single data point, to any single race event, because we are dealing with so many things that are new," Wilson said at Daytona. "We're going to continue to find issues, challenges with this car, as excited as we are about it, that are probably going to need to be fixed, and that's okay. That's to be expected… we're going to have to be a little patient and be mindful that we could be working on the airplane while we've been flying it for a little while, and that's just the nature of the beast."

It's up to the drivers now to maintain that even keel.