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Toyota Teams Preparing To Start A New Reign At Daytona

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By TONY FABRIZIO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 4, 2008

Updated: 07/04/2008 12:22 am

DAYTONA BEACH - Ford took its turn in the 1980s and '90s, with Bill Elliott and then Robert Yates Racing.

Chevrolet ruled for almost a decade with Dale Earnhardt Inc., and Hendrick Motorsports.

Now, another manufacturer is threatening to become the new king of Daytona:

Toyota.

The Japanese automaker hasn't won a Sprint Cup race at NASCAR's most famous track, but it will have three favorites in Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 in Tony Stewart, points leader Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin.

The three Joe Gibbs Racing drivers combined to lead 134 of the 200 laps in the Daytona 500 five months ago, and Stewart led at the white flag. On the final lap, though, Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch made the right moves in the draft and finished 1-2.

Busch gave Toyota a victory on Daytona's sister track, Talladega, winning the Aaron's 499 in April.

"Obviously, everyone would kind of like to pick up where we left off with a strong shot at winning Daytona and winning at Talladega," said Lee White, who last week replaced retiring Jim Aust as Toyota Racing Development president and general manager. "But you cannot count on that. This is racing, and everyone else has been working on their stuff. So I expect there will be a battle."

Stewart won the race formerly known as the Pepsi 400 in 2005 and 2006, when Gibbs was still running Chevrolets, leading a staggering 237 of 320 laps.

He may well be the best driver on the circuit on a hot and slick track, which would make him one of the favorites, even with an average car. But given how strong the Gibbs Toyotas were in the Daytona 500, Stewart should have a car that is much better than average.

"This is a race that's been really good for us, and I'm looking forward to it," Stewart said. "Every time you win in July, you say, 'man, if I could just trade that in for February.' But if you win here in July, it still gives you a lot of momentum toward the next February, knowing you were the last guy to win before coming back here."

Hamlin thinks the Gibbs Toyotas - which have won six of the 17 Cup-level races this season - could be dominant Saturday night.

"We want to do our best to get a 1-2-3 finish," he said. "This would be a good week for that."

All of the Toyota drivers in the 400 will have the same engine - and recent restrictor-plate races indicate it's a good one.

"We took on the engines for the restrictor-plate tracks as a project to free up the other guys to work on the open spec all of the tracks besides Daytona and Talladega," TRD's White said. "We saw the first benefit of that last fall at Talladega when five of the top six cars on the grid were Toyotas and we had a chance to win that race."

In the Daytona 500, Toyota nearly did win. Busch led eight times for 86 laps, Hamlin five times for 32 laps and Stewart four times for 16 laps, including the next-to-last lap.

The Gibbs trio has accounted for most of Toyota's success this year - Busch has won a series-high five times and has easily led the most laps (869) and miles (1,350) - but another Toyota team has begun flexing some muscle.

Red Bull Racing, with former Hendrick Motorsports driver Brian Vickers and ex-Champ Car star A.J. Allmendinger, ranks among the most improved teams on the circuit this year.

Vickers has scored top-five finishes in two of his last four starts, including a second at Pocono last month, and he hasn't finished worse than 16th in any of those races.

"TRD has come a long ways," said Vickers, whose lone career victory came at Talladega in October 2006. "Gibbs obviously has helped a lot. Gibbs has had a very successful engine program for many years, and obviously coming to Toyota, there were some new parts to it, but the basic process and building these engines was still the same, and I think they've helped bring the whole pie up a little bit."

Toyota already has had a good year at Daytona, counting other series. TRD engines have won the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona sports car race (Scott Pruett, Memo Rojas, Juan Montoya and Dario Franchitti), the Craftsman Truck Series race (Todd Bodine), the Nationwide race (Stewart) and a Daytona 500 qualifying race (Hamlin).

A victory Saturday night would make Toyota the new king of Daytona.

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