TOYOTA RACING – Bubba Wallace
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes

JOLIET, Ill. (July 4, 2026) – 23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace was made available to the media on Saturday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race tomorrow from Chicagoland Speedway.

BUBBA WALLACE, No. 23 Upper Deck Space Jam 30th Anniversary Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing

Did you enjoy your event at Navy Pier celebrating your 30th Anniversary Space Jam scheme you have on your car this weekend?

“It’s cool. It’s a true genuine full circle. I remember being a kid watching that on repeat and so to have that connection and be representing Looney Tunes, Warner Brothers, Space Jam, it’s everything that movie provided as a kid to be reliving that is just super cool. I appreciate all the parties involved and it was a great event at Navy Pier, had a great turnout, met a lot new fans and hopefully get them interested in this sport and get them to come out and be a part of it.”

What is it like to have Michael Jordan as you boss?

“It’s cool. We’re going on year six, so that question is fairly old, no disrespect, because it’s been six years now. It’s always special coming back to a place that he made so special and he was a part of this area and everything he built and created his legacy and everything he was able to do with his craft. Now to be representing it and taking it down a different path in the sport of NASCAR, it’s kind of surreal when you sit back and look at it. He’s ultra-competitive and super supportive of our race team and everything that we need to go out and win races. Hire the right people to make sure they are doing their jobs and getting us the right equipment, it starts with him. It’s not just throwing money at something and hoping it succeeds. He understands the business and makes the most out of it each and every weekend. We’ve had an incredible year as a team and it’s only getting better each and every week, so just excited for the future.”

Does this year feel like a bit of a rollercoaster for you?

“Every year it’s the same rollercoaster. I think we’ve been that much better this year, so the highs have been higher than before and the lows have been different. When we sat down in the offseason with Charles (Denike, crew chief) and Dave Rogers (23XI Competition Director) and myself sat down in a meeting and highlighted the low hanging fruits and what we needed to do and the biggest thing for us to just raise the floor. There was a lot of potential left at the end of our bad races last year, whether we would have a 15th place car and finish 18th to 20th. At Nashville, Pocono, a couple to where we were top 15 at best and the other races we’ve had winning potential and we haven’t been able to see it play through. We have a great first stage in just about every race the last two or three months. We marched forward from where we were, whether that’s qualifying or just metric from rainout. We would have the speed, but something would go wrong. It stings a little more this year just knowing how much potential is left out there and then to see how our teammates are winning. It’s like, damn, I think if we can have everything go right we can be in victory lane too. As opposed to last year where the floor was much lower.”

How do you handle managing the emotions of the mental side of it?

“You marry your best friend and have a good sounding board. It’s tough. Have I had the happiest of days lately? No, I haven’t. But at the same time I have a great support system at home and I have two beautiful kids and that helps out a lot. It’s all part of it. I sit there every year and ask why we are in this scenario and as much as I don’t want to hear it, she gives her thoughts and her advice on how to handle it and we go to the racetrack next week. You surround yourself with good people and it helps out.”

23XI Racing were all fast in practice and in San Diego a few weeks ago. How are you seeing the growth across all four teams there?

“It’s fun showing up to the racetrack and having speed. I got in the car yesterday and I didn’t remember anything about Chicagoland Speedway. The only thing I could remember was the fire station out front. So, we get on track and I look at some data and try to watch some film a little bit. I feel like I have a good grasp on it, so we got and make our first 10-lap run and I’m P35 and I’m like, this is going to be a long weekend. But, we made some adjustments and obviously finished practice second and we worked hard to get speed out of her car. You do look at the pylon and you see the numbers and our car is fast and it’s the people that we’ve put in place ot extract the most speed out of our cars. It’s the conversations we had in the offseason. I felt like we were a very volatile team the last handful of years where our three cars will be good, we go to the next week and we run 10th to 15th. We go back to winning and it was just like a ping pong match. I brought that up and you look at the 11 (Hamlin), you look at the five (Larson), and you look at the 12 (Blaney) and it’s every week those guys are in the top-five. They’re figuring out how to get speed and that that falls on the drivers. I’m one of the biggest ingredients and part of the whole recipe, right? I think it just falls back to how we approach the season and looking at the important thing and not getting too far ahead of ourselves. We’ve been doing a really good job, everybody at the racetrack and everyone at Airspeed has just been doing an incredible job to bring us cars. And then we are also getting the right data at the racetrack to focus on the areas that the drivers step up in a big way when it comes to Sunday. So it’s just everybody working together. Could not be more proud of what we’ve been able to do as a race team. It’s going to be a good second half of the year.”

You posted a picture earlier this week with a Rowdy hat and you’ve had Rowdy over your door. Was there some significance behind that picture?

“Ever since Charlotte weekend it’s been sitting there. There’s a poker table and right next to the wall. It’s just been sitting there and I’ve been meaning to find a place for it. There was a Columbia helmet that was sitting there so it got moved to another spot. I just felt like it was nice to put it as a centerpiece on the helmet wall. I mentioned in my helmet wall post months ago, I’ve never really wanted to trade with anybody. (Ryan) Blaney was at the top of the list for awhile. He was bugging me for years and finally got one of his and (Scott) McGloughlin, so I thought it would be fitting to do something different with the KB hat and how much he meant to my career. So it felt good and cool to do that.”

What are some of the keys to you to keep growing the sport here in the Chicago market?

“It’s just tough with this one because we are so far away from the city and there’s a lot of traffic. The people that live it probably don’t want to deal with it on a weekend, but it is what it is. We have a great facility here. I don’t know the reason why we stopped coming here, I don’t know what the attendance was back in 2019. I feel like it’s going to be a interesting race that people will want to tune into tomorrow to see how it all shakes out. I think it’s a great market, whether it’s here or the street course. I truly enjoyed the street course, I thought it was just different than what we always do. Having our first street course was special. I was a big proponent of being in the area, I think it’s great for the sport. We have a lot of fans in this area that want to see more growth and more opportunity to be a part of our sport. Anything we can do as drivers, we are all on board as a sport moving forward.”

How do you try and bridge the gap between getting people down here to Chicagoland then perhaps back in downtown at some point?

“We have to look at way to make the fans to want to come out. I don’t think you can just say hey, come watch this product we have on track. I think we need to have events going on to educate the people about the sport that are new and have them doing interactive things out in the midway. There’s a lot we can do as drivers. We’ve tried it for both races coming up throughout our weekly calls and what we have in the media. You need to sit down with key stakeholders and find ways to make it interactive and people wanting to come out and enjoy the fun. There’s no concrete answer, just a lot of work needs to be done.”

Do you have a stance on where you would like to see NASCAR race on July 4th weekend?

“No, not really. I think we just continue to work on our product and keep showing up and providing and producing really good racing. Keep giving the fans what they want to see and have them itching for more after the checkered flag falls. That’s the ultimate goal I believe, to get more people involved and get that conversation rolling about NASCAR and continue to grow the hype up. These last handful of weeks have been really, really fun with San Diego, Sonoma, and now we’re here at Chicago. We’re hitting really big markets and providing really great racing and everything that falls in behind that has been really positive. As far as July 4th, have fun.”

About Toyota

Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in North America for nearly 70 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands, plus our more than 1,800 dealerships.

Toyota directly employs nearly 64,000 people in North America who have contributed to the design, engineering, and assembly of over 50 million cars and trucks at our 14 manufacturing plants. In 2025, Toyota’s plant in North Carolina began to assemble automotive batteries for electrified vehicles.

For more information about Toyota, visit www.ToyotaNewsroom.com.

TOYOTA RACING – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Pole Quotes

JOLIET, Ill. (July 4, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media his pole winning run Saturday afternoon at Chicagoland Speedway.

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Progressive Insurance Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing

What do you think about having so much speed on a weekly basis?

“I don’t want to continue to underplay it, but we got really fortunate. The last 12 cars had full sun. The last few had like 90% sun, but I think it was the deciding factor. We saw right after I went, the track got hotter and seems like the corner speeds of those guys started to slow down. I think that if there was one more car behind Ty Gibbs they definitely would have beat us, but because it went full shade we got fortunate there. They did a really good job with my car overnight. We worked for a long time with the team trying to figure out what I need to go faster and execute around here. We did a mock run yesterday, that was helpful for me to get a good balance check. But generally these are great racetracks for us. And typically I have a really good feel of what I need. Yesterday my balance was as far off as I’ve been in quite some time. A lot of the test was more for Toyota and getting information for JGR and those guys. We didn’t really work on balance a whole lot and when we came here our balance was quite a bit off, so we fixed that overnight and got that better. I thought I ran a very conservative turns 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 didn’t quite hit it right, but looked like I got off turn 4 better than the competition. This is very surprising, truthfully, I was actually thinking that I would take the rainout in P19, but once I ran the lap I thought it would put us somewhere in the top-12 and I was happy with that.”

What did the lap feel like running a qualifying lap here for the first time since 2019?

“I ran a mock run yesterday on my last lap on the racetrack. It still didn’t match up to the race runs for the whole 23XI guys, they were so much faster. It gave me a good balance check of what I needed and we made some pretty big changes from that moment to give me a heads up of what I needed today. (Turns) 1 and 2 felt pretty good, and then (turns) 3 and 4 it was just good enough.”

Did you pay any attention to the Hendrick Cars? It seems they have been gaining in recent weeks.

“I would agree with you. I’ve said that they are right there. When I raced them at Pocono, I could tell. I raced every single one of them and their all out speed was faster, we just had a little better balance than what they had over the course of a run. I think my personal opinion, (Kyle) Larson’s the best driver at this racetrack, so he’s going to be someone to contend with and I’m sure all the other cars are.”

When you have qualifying speed, how hard is it to carry over that to the race?

“Not much. So many of our qualifying on these types of tracks are impound where you can change some thing, but here when I ran my mock rock it was the same as my race run for a few laps. What we learned overnight is something we will definitely take into our race tomorrow.”

Is this track more like Charlotte or Texas as far as how bumpy it is and any potential for things to happen?

“A little bit. Once you get past that one in turn 1 that seems like its actually bigger the further you go up the racetrack, once you get past that, the corner is actually pretty smooth. I wouldn’t suspect there would be too much trouble with our cars. Maybe the O’Reilly cars, just simply because of their aero platform, you probably have to be a little bit more careful being beside someone that hits a bump. The NextGen car, we are able to run closer side-by-side and not lose control as much. I don’t think it will be a huge issue, (turns) 3 and 4, the minute someone decides they are going to hold the guy on the bottom hard and low and that guy is trying to accelerate over the bump, that’s where you could potentially see something. That would be the one spot I would be careful giving the guy the extra foot that they need.”

You have talked about how you are more open now with your teammates in meeting that you were when you were younger? Would you say you give different feedback than you did years ago?

“Yes, I think that’s very valid to observe that. Joe Gibbs Racing got younger. When I was a little more closed off, I had Hall of Fame teammates in Kyle Busch, Martin Truex, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and on and on. I was more like I want to hear what they have to say. I have a responsibility at Joe Gibbs Racing, where I excel versus them is I understand what the difference between Friday, and Saturday and Sunday. That’s where I feel like the advantages and feel like it’s my responsibility to let them know what I think they are going to fight tomorrow because of the inexperience that they have. It’s why the Gibbs family values me as much as I do, because I’m able to go out there and every time Ty (Gibbs) comes over and it’s what about this and what about that, same with the 23XI guys sharing the information. I’m racing against myself with those guys. So it’s just part of the responsibility and I figure while I’m here for this little while longer I might as well open it up and if they beat me, they beat me.”

As a driver and owner, how do you continue to help develop and grow NASCAR in the Chicago market?

“I think it’s an important audience for us. Even when we came here for the test there were three cars with no logos on them and it was warm, there was probably 500 people in the stands. When I say 500, that’s in the middle of the day all during the day for eight hours watching three cars and maybe one car on the track at one time. There’s not much to see, but they’ve been wanting for us to get back into this area. I think this region is very important for us and we need to keep this region on the schedule once if not twice. This racetrack is going to race so well tomorrow that it will be hard to say lets just take it back off the schedule, but they’re up against it. There’s only so many slots and certainly can’t have more. I think that this racetrack races really well and if you look they did a great job getting it ready for us to be here. It feels like Kansas and looks like Kansas. They added a few coats of paint to it and now we’re ready to go race. So it’s hard to leave a track like this that has some wear and character off the schedule going forward and I appreciate Ben (Kennedy) and his team putting it back on the schedule after all of these years.”

About Toyota

Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in North America for nearly 70 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands, plus our more than 1,800 dealerships.

Toyota directly employs nearly 64,000 people in North America who have contributed to the design, engineering, and assembly of over 50 million cars and trucks at our 14 manufacturing plants. In 2025, Toyota’s plant in North Carolina began to assemble automotive batteries for electrified vehicles.

For more information about Toyota, visit www.ToyotaNewsroom.com.

TOYOTA RACING – Tyler Reddick
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes

JOLIET, Ill. (July 4, 2026) – 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick was made available to the media on Saturday prior to tomorrow’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Chicagoland Speedway.

TYLER REDDICK, No. 45 Jordan Brand Toyota Camry XSE, 23XI Racing

You seemed to not be as happy with your car after practice yesterday. Why were you not optimistic?

“I didn’t think about that. Right when Marty (Snider) pulled me we were right in the heat of discussion of the things we wanted to keep working on, decisions we wanted to make to start the night. Just where we wanted to go from practice, what more we can make better, what we can change, what we need to be thinking about. The biggest thing on my mind was just how flat it was with this tire and that at other intermediate tracks it’s what we’ve come to know at other tracks. I guess I just walked away from practice scratching my head a bit. I thought there was going to be more fall off. The track has been dormant for awhile, but I just thought the tires would wear out more than what they did, we would have winded out more, eventually it would get there throughout the weekend. I was expecting it to fill more and more out, just not a lot of falloff throughout practice.”

How much did the rain coming through yesterday change the track and could that be a challenge this weekend?

“I guess we shouldn’t speak for everybody, but I was definitely thinking that tires would wear out and we would move around a little bit. It might just be how dirty the track was. They can go out there and blow the track, but just how much time it sat. They did a tire test here and a wheelforce test here, but the upper lanes of the racetrack was largely untouched. It might just take a little bit. I think the O’Reilly cars should help that. That’s going to be good for us in the race. I think by Sunday at the end of stage one or stage two, one of those, it will be back to the Chicago that we all know. Just top to bottom all the lanes kind of available to use. In the first run, it ate away the tires a little bit. But run two or run three it was just not as much lap time fall off, tire wear as we expected.”

What do you make of what the last month has been for you and your team?

“That’s racing. We had a really good start and we were reminded about how fast things can change. The nice thing for us is that it seems like the speed is there and the potential is there, we were just finally served a dose of races not going our way. Some of it you could argue was inflicted on ourselves. What we need to have with our cars with our team we still do have. We got a couple of not good points days. Funny enough at Pocono we ran well but still lost points. That’s how high of a level we have to execute right now. We have to be scoring lots and lots of points, not just getting the finishes. So we have to have clean days. We got to dig out of the hole pretty quickly here on Sunday and work our way forward.”

Does past experience matter here at Chicagoland?

“I definitely thought coming into this that past experiences would matter. One example of this is that yesterdays practice, past experience doesn’t matter quite nearly as much as I thought it was going to. I remember coming here in a O’Reilly car and lots of fall off, I’m sure they’re experiencing that right now. By nature, how different the Cup car can be kind of showed itself a bit yesterday and everyone expecting this race and this track act a certain way. Just what we saw yesterday, the NextGen car has kind of changed everything at a lot of these track of what we kind of knew before. Yesterday was just kind of a product of that.”

Are you expecting Michael Jordan to be here this weekend?

“When he is here it is nice to have him. Whether he’s here or not, he’s always checking in and seeing how things are going. Anytime we are able to have him here at the racetrack, I see the impact from it. But it leaves quite the impact on everybody on the team or part of the organization. Anytime we are able to have him here everyone is motivated to perform well for the organization, but when he’s here it gets everyone going a little bit, which is nice.”

How realistic is it in the middle of the race to go over the patch out there in turns 3 and 4?

“It’s certainly on our minds over the years. There’s been other tracks over the years where things have changed. There’s been years we went to Fontana, sometimes you want to hit the sealer and sometimes you want to avoid sealer depending on if it was new or it was old. The old Atlanta, a characteristic of it was the apron and the bottom lane kind of interacted and how white the paint was and the grip down there. It’s something we’ll explore, but as drivers there’s racetracks and moments when conditions are right for that kind of thing. There was a time they were putting PJ1 or resins on the racetracks and it was super line sensitive as well. It’s something over the years that the drivers have adjusted and adapted to.”

What are your favorite memories of racing here coming up the ladder to the Cup Series?

The two that come to mind are my O’Reilly races. While they were good races, they were also awful memories. I remember my year at JR Motorsports, we were trying to just get this thing turned around we obviously won Daytona and we were a disaster the rest of the entire year. So as the playoffs were approaching we come here we win stage one racing against Harvick, Larson was coming from the back, it had the potential to be a really strong day for us. Then we had a slow pit stop and then I sped on pit road the next stop and we were crashed. Good or bad memories, looking back on it we have been able to find speed or we have good speed in our racecars or a combination of both. Naturally coming into this weekend I look into my two most recent races I know it’s a great track for me from my past experiences. If you look at the sheet in practice, maybe that’s carried over. Seeing all of our 23XI cars towards the top is just good preparation and good teamwork coming into this. Hopefully it is a good track for me, it seems like on paper it’s going to be a good weekend for 23XI as well.”

How much do you expect Atlanta to change from when you were there in February?

“It is a change, but there was a period of time it felt like it was losing grip each time we returned. As of late it feels like it’s kind of stabilized. The two races we have there, the track is very different between the two and that’s the fun thing about it. I do enjoy going back to some of these racetracks twice in the calendar year. It is nice when do go twice we have conditions changed like they do. We go there in March, February and it’s cool, handling is not as big of a issue and everyone packs up and races really tight. We got back there in the summer races it’s easier to slip up and easier to track. Cars get more spread out because handling is important. So every time we come back for the second date when it’s warm the racing is just a bit different and that’s one thing I enjoy about that event. I like going to all these racetracks, but it is fun when they are different like that. It doesn’t take the exact same formula both times.”

About Toyota

Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in North America for nearly 70 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands, plus our more than 1,800 dealerships.

Toyota directly employs nearly 64,000 people in North America who have contributed to the design, engineering, and assembly of over 50 million cars and trucks at our 14 manufacturing plants. In 2025, Toyota’s plant in North Carolina began to assemble automotive batteries for electrified vehicles.

For more information about Toyota, visit www.ToyotaNewsroom.com.

TOYOTA RACING – Denny Hamlin
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes

JOLIET, Ill. (July 3, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin was made available to the media on Friday prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Chicagoland Speedway.

DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 Progressive Insurance Toyota Camry XSE, Joe Gibbs Racing

How much will experience matter this weekend?

“It’s probably that much, because going into this practice session with many unknowns as well. I ran some laps here during the test but it’s still one line. I’ve been around long enough to know that a test racetrack and a race weekend track are two vastly different things. So, lots of unknowns, just what line are we going to run? What’s going to be the fastest and as Kyle (Larson) mentioned, we didn’t really go up the racetrack at all during the test, so we don’t know whether the bump more or less the higher you go. It’s always going to be a little bit of, I have some old notes I had in the book that I looked at, but it will be something small, nothing big.”

Why do you think this racetrack may work well with the NextGen car?

“It’s got a good mix of the power and the drag on the NextGen car has been good for, generally, mile and-a-half, two-mile racetracks. It just runs barely slow enough down the straightaway where you barely get a draft, but in the corner this racetrack has options to get out of the wake of the car in front of you so you, so you can usually keep that momentum up by moving around. So the wider the racetrack, the longer the racetrack, the better the racing in the NextGen car tends to be.”

How have you seen how the championship is shaping up this year with the Chase format as opposed to what we’ve seen the last several years with the elimination format and eventually the Championship 4 at the end of the year?

“I certainly feel like the destination of where you want to go is more in your hands. The sample size is bigger. This thing could come down to a green, white, checkered at Homestead, we don’t know. But at least there are other races and restarts that happened that counted just the same, the nine races before that. I like it for that reason that I don’t think that one freak race or incident or win just completely changes the outlook of your championship hopes. I’m very optimistic from the standpoint that generally the bigger the data set the better off our chances are going to be.”

How do you evaluate the dynamic between the teams within Toyota as a manufacturer?

“I certainly think that Toyota has a role in it, but I don’t think Toyota is that much different than any of the other manufacturers. We pay a fee (23XI Racing), so that’s the difference. It’s not like Toyota forces us to work together. We chose to be affiliated with Joe Gibbs Racing and we felt like it would shorten up the learning curve and get us competitive quicker. And now it’s a relationship we still pay, but he relationship definitely goes back and forth. There’s certainly information going both ways through that tunnel, so it works in that kind of way. But it’s not something that is forced by the manufacturers, I would think that probably we get the same amount of stuff. Ourselves and LEGACY, is no different than Penske and RFK. I think that probably we get the same amount of stuff that we share that they get, but we just chose to have an alliance, and that’s what I felt like was the best business decision.”

What level of importance to the manufacturer do you think having a alliance between teams as far as information sharing goes? Is this something that has contributed to Toyota’s success?

“It certainly doesn’t hurt by any means, because you got lots of good drivers amongst that group of seven cars, sometimes eight cars. You got a lot of good crew chiefs and lot of smart engineers on both sides who bounce ideas off of each other as well. It is a benefit, but it’s something that’s not for free. I think it’s a really good deal for Joe Gibbs Racing because you get paid and you get some information, but then for us (23XI) it allows us to hire a lot less people. We could just take the money and hire additional people, but then is that the best way to do it to have two organizations spending the same money on the same thing and getting likely the same answer? That’s not the best way to stack your resources I wouldn’t think. It’s not the entire reason though, that’s for sure.”

As an owner, how do you evaluate future talent in the Truck Series versus the O’Reilly Series?

“You just have a self-built model in your head that this team, their cars are 100% and that’s five cars at 100%. And then the next team, I put them a little lower. I’m not in the trenches and know all the facts, but I hear enough that this team has better engines and this team has better bodies and you just kind of put all of that in your head and say that is where they should be running. Then you find some outliers, well a team that’s in your mind is an 80% resource team performing at a 90% level, well why is that? Is it the drivers, is it the cars? What is it, right? You can just evaluate in that kind of way. There’ no exact science to it from my standpoint. A lot of the guys other than Corey Heim, I’ve been on the racetrack with them before and I can see they can drive well beyond their equipment is supposed to be going in speed. For Corey, there’s just a moment in that Iowa race where he was running for Sam Hunt, I know that car should not be running that fast. There are just little moments that happen like that which get your attention and if it happens more and more often, then you start to have conversations.”

With the vehicles being so different, how can you tell who stands out and how it would translate to the Cup Series?

“It’s really, really hard. The trucks probably drive more similarly to the NextGen car, but it’s really hard to evaluate one over the other. I just look at racecraft. Can someone make a move and put their car in a position that I know is a very difficult position and they come out of it ahead? It really doesn’t matter to me what vehicle they’re driving of the person I’m watching, it makes no difference because I believe the great drivers can adapt to the car they are in. You learn racecraft, then you just adapt your style to get the speed out of the machine that you are in.”

About Toyota

Toyota (NYSE:TM) has been a part of the cultural fabric in North America for nearly 70 years, and is committed to advancing sustainable, next-generation mobility through our Toyota and Lexus brands, plus our more than 1,800 dealerships.

Toyota directly employs nearly 64,000 people in North America who have contributed to the design, engineering, and assembly of over 50 million cars and trucks at our 14 manufacturing plants. In 2025, Toyota’s plant in North Carolina began to assemble automotive batteries for electrified vehicles.

For more information about Toyota, visit www.ToyotaNewsroom.com.