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Upgraded Toyota Poised To Pounce

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By TONY FABRIZIO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 14, 2008

Updated: 02/14/2008 12:11 am

DAYTONA BEACH - Knocked back? Yes. Humbled? Not so much.

Only three months removed from a debut season in NASCAR's top series in which Toyota teams placed only one car in the top 35 in the owners standings, Toyota Racing Development general manager Lee White sounds almost brash about 2008.

"This is not the same as last year," he said recently. "We have a year under our belt, the three teams that we were associated with have a year under their belts, and of course you have the Joe Gibbs Racing operation that's completely changed the outlook for us."

White doesn't talk about whether Toyota will win, but rather how many teams it will get in the Chase. The optimism is not unfounded. Besides the blockbuster addition of JGR and its trio of elite drivers - Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and newcomer Kyle Busch - Toyota's returning three teams look better.

Michael Waltrip Racing, Bill Davis Racing and Red Bull Racing all were fast in testing, and in recent days, Stewart finished second in the Bud Shootout and Michael Waltrip qualified second for Sunday's Daytona 500.

Seven Toyota drivers already are qualified for the 500 - three more than made the race last year - and four more will fight for berths in today's two 150-mile qualifying races.

"It's a much different attitude," said Dale Jarrett, one of the four who haven't secured a spot. "Last year, it was everything I could do to go out off of pit road with a group of cars and hang on to the draft. Now, I feel like I can go out there, and if I'm in the middle of it, I can work my way up. If I start out in the front of it, I can lead that draft."

Toyota's progress is no surprise to those who have feared world's No. 1 automaker from the outset, predicting that it would not only win big but would also upset the economics of NASCAR through unrestrained spending.

Team owner Jack Roush led the outcry, speaks now of Toyota's "miserable failure in terms of what they were looking for" in 2007, but still frets about the future.

"I'm sure they will prevail," Roush said. "The weak teams that they've got, the teams that aren't functioning well that they can make stronger, they will fix. And ultimately they will be a factor in advancing technology and changing the financial model in a troubled-time economy, and they will put pressure on the rest of the manufacturers if NASCAR doesn't control that."

Felix Sabates, the billionaire part-owner of Chip Ganassi Racing, agrees.

"Once the Japanese decide - and I've dealt with the overseas market my whole life - that they're going to be the predominant force, whatever money they've got to spend, they'll spend," he said. "And they'll do it with reckless abandon until they win.

"So I'm afraid of them. I'm glad they've only got Gibbs, because if they had Gibbs and Hendrick Motorsports, they would be undefeated."

White, a former Roush Racing general manager whose full title is senior vice president and general manager of TRD, repeatedly finds himself in the position of defending Toyota's spending practices.

He insists that while Toyota wants to win, it wants to be a good partner within NASCAR.

"We look at the big picture," he said. "We want what's good for the sport, and to be honest, I'm not sure if Toyota came in and did what Hendrick did last year win half of the races, that would be good in the long run."

Nobody expects Toyota to win half of the races, but it's virtually certain that Gibbs, which has won three championships since 2000 and placed two drivers in the Chase last year, will win and contend for Chase berths.

With NASCAR's new car, the only differences between the Chevrolets JGR ran last year and their Toyotas they are running now are engines and subtle, mostly cosmetic variations in front and rear body pieces. Some of the Chevrolets Stewart and Hamlin drove last year have been "reskinned" as Toyotas.

"All they've done is change the decals on those cars," Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick, exaggerating a little.

And JGR shouldn't be lacking for horsepower. Mark Cronquist, the team's longtime engine builder, is assembling the new engines and says they're similar to the Chevrolet R07 engine the team placed two drivers in the Chase with last year.

"The Toyota engine we build under our spec has the exact same valves, pushrods, and rocker arms that were in our Chevy R07 motor," Cronquist said. "So they're not that different."

Toyota's biggest shortcoming last year, besides being aligned with two startup teams and lower-run Bill Davis Racing, was a shortage of horsepower in the midrange of the power band. White says the problem has been addressed, noting that most of TRD's experience was in building methanol-burning engines for open-wheel cars and that NASCAR's gasoline-burning engines are different.

Eric Warren, the technical director at Michael Waltrip Racing who came over from the Gillett Evernham Motorsports Dodge program, says he can understand why White might come across as cocky.

"It's hard not to be," he said. "It's pretty exciting stuff with Gibbs coming on and with watching the growth of our team, I think certainly Toyota is going to get some wins this year. It would take something really strange to happen for Gibbs and the rest of us not to grab some wins."

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