Shawn Langdon won his first Wally Trophy of 2025 in the NHRA Arizona Nationals at Firebird Motorsports Park outside of Phoenix.
NHRA
Shawn Langdon captured his first win of the 2025 NHRA season and a repeat at Firebird Motorsports Park. Langdon had to defeat his teammate, Doug Kalitta, to capture the Top Fuel Wally Trophy on Sunday. Langdon's victory is the 20th of his career and marks Toyota's second straight Top Fuel win to start 2025, following Antron Brown's victory in Gainesville.
“Brian (Husen, crew chief) and the team are the reason we won today,” said Langdon. “I’ve been saying all along, Brian has turned this team into a bunch of superstars. All the credit to him. All the guys have done such a fantastic job. No mistakes, gave me such a great race car today. Knew going into the final, you’re running A.J. (Alan Johnson, crew chief, Doug Kalitta) and Doug (Kalitta). What are you going to do? You have to throw down and Brian said ‘we have to get this thing to go a low 3.70,’ and that’s what we did. We called our shot a little bit. Proud of the guys, everybody at Kalitta Air Careers. Toyota. It’s a win-win for Connie Kalitta (team owner). Most importantly, we put a smile on his face.”
- Shawn Langdon
In Funny Car, J.R. Todd went the farthest of the GR Supra Funny Car group, advancing to the second round but no further. Ron Capps fell in the first round after his engine exploded which caused his car body to blow off his chassis, followed by contact with the wall. Capps was uninjured and climbed out under his own power.
NASCAR
Bubba Wallace, Chase Briscoe and Denny Hamlin earned top-five finishes Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, finishing third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Tyler Reddick joined the trio in the top 10, placing eighth.
“Yeah, I need to look back (at it), but all-in-all, what a day,” Wallace said. “Finally got us a good finish! But we need to go back and look at if I burned my stuff up to start there (final stint). I thought I got into a rhythm early, but that was a longer run there so thought our capability fell away. I got into the fence there and that allowed him (Alex Bowman) to get beside me and then just capability from then on wasn’t there. Hate that I messed up, but I came over the radio and said ‘I haven’t been in many situations like that to give away a race so a lot to learn today. I can’t even hang my head over that finish. Proud of the effort in race six. We’ve had fast cars, just nothing to show for it (yet). But, here we are. Got our Columbia Sportswear Toyota Camry XSE a top-three finish, so a good day.”
- Bubba Wallace
Wallace led the second most laps on the day (56) and earned his best career finish at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Briscoe tied his best finish so far in the 2025 season. For Hamlin, he climbed his way from the 23rd starting position to capture the Stage 2 win while leading total 15 laps.
Brandon Jones was the lead Toyota GR Supra in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Homestead Miami-Speedway with a seventh-place finish. Jones did not make a qualifying attempt Saturday morning and drove his No. 20 GR Supra from the 38th starting position all the way up to a seventh-place finish, his third consecutive top-10 this season.
“Yeah, I was really happy to get back to the top-10. A long day from the rear at this race track (Homestead),” Jones said. “My Menards/KlearVue Toyota GR Supra took off really well and (I) passed a ton of cars. I thought I would as we (had) a lap-and-a-half tire advantage, which here, is pretty big to start the race. So, we drove to 15th (position) really quickly, but from 15th, we kind of struggled a little bit. Thought we made decent adjustments. This place is really hard in that aspect of you have to start bad to end well, so the balance of where you start out to migrate balance-wise. It was a great effort. Our pitstops (pause), these No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing guys have been on it all year long. That’s really been helping us a bunch. And then, just stayed locked in and stay consistent. The No. 48 (Nick Sanchez) was really fast, and some others were coming, but (I) tried to block their air there (at the end) and not mess up really. I think it was a lot easier to mess up than hit the line today. Had a long green flag run there for Homestead, but a really good rebound and now, head to one of my favorite tracks in Martinsville next weekend. Hopefully, this is more momentum for us.”
- Brandon Jones
Taylor Gray captured his first career Xfinity Series pole Saturday morning and led the opening seven laps of Saturday’s race. Gray has started inside the top-10 in every race so far this season.
Corey Heim led the Toyota Tundra TRD Pro contingent in Friday night’s Truck Series race, finishing in the third position. Heim started the race from pole and led 78 total laps, winning both stages, before earning his third top-five finish in four races so far this season. Heim is the points leader in the Truck Series with an eight-point advantage.
“Yeah, it stinks. I feel like we were lights out, the best truck tonight,” said Heim. “Think we should’ve won the race by six, seven seconds at the end there. I feel like at the beginning of the runs, I knew what we were capable of and let those guys get away, burn their stuff up and then, fly past them. I don’t know exactly what was going on. Never really had an issue like that. I'd be totally fine, and the engine would just hard cut on me. Dash would go black and have no power until I fully cycled it. So, I was coasting for six seconds trying to turn the power switch and turn it back (on). I don’t know. Felt I ran a really good race, saving tires and would mow them down on the long runs there. But huge thank you to TRICON Garage, Safelite and Toyota for all of their work. This No. 11 Tundra TRD Pro was really, really good. This just stinks pretty bad.”
- Corey Heim
But huge thank you to TRICON Garage, Safelite and Toyota for all of their work. This No. 11 Tundra TRD Pro was really, really good. This just stinks pretty bad.”
Brandon Jones had a solid night in his first Truck Series start of the season with TRICON Garage, finishing in the 12th position. Stewart Friesen gained valuable stage points tonight, finishing eighth and fourth in both stages.
ARCA
Max Reaves was triumphant in his ARCA Menards Series East debut at Five Flags Speedway. From pole, Reaves led 92 of the 150 laps on the way to becoming the youngest winner in ARCA Menards Series East history at 15 years, two months and 15 days old.
TRANS AM
In the debut of the new TA2 Toyota Camry body, Thomas Annunziata and Tyler Gonzalez finished 1-2 in the CUBE 3 Architecture TA2 race at Road Atlanta. Annunziata started from pole on Sunday to capture his second win of the season.
POWRi
Toyota-powered drivers were victorious on all three nights of the POWRi National Midget League’s Turnpike Challenge Oklahoma triple-header. Cannon McIntosh kicked off the 2025 season by taking top honors at Creek County Speedway Thursday night with Jacob Denney placing second. On Friday at Port City Raceway in Tulsa, Gavin Miller led all 30 laps for the victory. Denney earned runner-up honors again and McIntosh would place third. Denney found his way to the Port City winner’s circle on Saturday as he led 16 laps to earn his first victory of the season. Denney currently leads the championship by 20 points over McIntosh.
What’s Next
Another busy weekend is ahead for Team Toyota with NASCAR heading to Martinsville Speedway, while NHRA is back on track at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip and Toyota GAZOO Racing North America’s GR Cup opens its 2025 season at Sonoma Raceway.
The NASCAR racing kicks off on Friday, March 28 with the NASCAR Truck Series at 7:30 p.m. ET on FS1. The NASCAR Xfinity Series follows on Saturday, March 29 at 5 p.m. ET on the CW. The NASCAR Cup Series closes the weekend on Sunday, March 30 at 3:00 p.m. ET on FS1.
The NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series has its third race of the season in Pomona. Final eliminations are on Sunday, March 30 at 6:30 p.m. ET on FS1.
Finally, the Toyota GR Cup’s season opener at Sonoma Raceway begins with race 1 on Saturday, March 29, at 5:05 p.m. EST and race 2 on Sunday, March 30, at 3:55 p.m. EST. Both races can be viewed at https://www.grcupseries.com/watch-live.