[LSC9901]

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Toyota teams struggling to turn fortunes around


By Mike Mulhern
JOURNAL REPORTER






CONCORD
The key to Chevrolet’s domination of the Nextel Cup tour this season, Toyota’s Lee White said, might be a secret tire war between Goodyear and Michelin.
With NASCAR barring teams from testing on Goodyears, Nextel Cup teams have turned to rival tire makers, including Michelin, through its B.F. Goodrich division. That has become quite the hot potato in behind-the-scenes talks between NASCAR executives and Goodyear officials.
But White’s Toyota teams have more to worry about than just tires. Pick a subject - engines, chassis dynamics, aerodynamics, even team management. All are up for debate. It’s not easy being new in NASCAR, but this has been an unusually brutal season for White, the field manager for Toyota’s racing efforts, and his teams. In the 11 Nextel Cup races so far, Toyota’s seven full-time drivers - Michael Waltrip, Brian Vickers, Dale Jarrett, A.J. Allmendinger, Jeremy Mayfield, David Reutimann and Dave Blaney - have failed to qualify a combined 37 times. And none are in the top 35 in the standings.
Things might be better if NASCAR hadn’t changed a key rule during the offseason, limiting previous champions to just six provisional starts. Waltrip, a new team owner, had planned on Jarrett, one of his three drivers, being able to take advantage of the provisionals, which before this season were unlimited.
Now, however, none of the Toyota teams are guaranteed a spot in any field, because none are in the top 35. So all will have to qualify on speed to make it into Sunday’s Coca Cola 600.
“Our Trucks are really good.Want to talk about Trucks?” White said, grinning. “Hey, nobody wants to talk about Trucks.”
Toyota is dominating the Trucks series, of course, with Mike Skinner leading the tour.
“We like Busch, too, with two guys (Reutimann and Blaney) in the top-five….” White said.
But Cup is where it’s really at, of course, and that’s a lot tougher than Trucks and Busch.
A big hang-up for every NASCAR team is the lack of correct Goodyear tires for testing. NASCAR has barred Goodyear from selling race tires to teams away from the track, so crews are making deals with rivals, including Michelin and Hoosier.
NASCAR’s no-Goodyears-for-testing rule ostensibly is meant to keep teams from expensive tire analysis at specialized engineering shops. But some in the garage suspect that NASCAR has the rule for another reason - to show Goodyear that other tire makers can make race tires.
“Yes, there is some of that going on,” White said. “But I expect that somewhere over the next little bit, NASCAR will deal with that. Because the current tire restrictions aren’t working. Teams are still spending money … either on Hoosiers or Bridgestone or something coming from France (Michelin).
“It is happening … and it is probably skewing the level of competition out there today. One of the teams that is shellacking everybody (possibly the Rick Hendrick camp, which has won eight of the first 11 Cup races?) is heavily involved in that activity.
“Whether that’s right or wrong is for NASCAR to address.”
White himself has enough alligators to fend off.
“We’re just working on our deal a day at a time,” White said. “And anybody who is working around the new engine we’re racing in Cup, either at TRD (Toyota Racing Development, which has a major engine-building arm) or Bill Davis’ (where Toyota engine development is also going on) can see that we’re evolving and advancing race by race. As I look at our long-range plans, there aren’t any two consecutive races the rest of the year where we will run the same engine. At every race we will have something new. Every single race.
“Sometimes, it may be a small change, sometimes a big change. For the 600, we’ve got a major engine change, which we think is pretty advanced.
“After looking at the chassis-dyno numbers after the Atlanta race (in mid-March), thanks to NASCAR’s largess, we got to see where we stack up against everybody else. We could see our sheer peak horsepower number is pretty darn good, right there with Matt Kenseth and Jack Roush (Ford men), which had the best peak horsepower.
“But it’s not just about the peak horsepower but the slope.”
The slope of dyno-graphs show how horsepower changes in relation to RPM - i.e., how well a car accelerates through the corner.
“If you compare our slope to the Hendrick guys and the Gibbs guys, the best Chevrolets, they were down at that peak number, down 18 to 20 (horsepower) at (maximum) 9,400 or 9,500 RPM,” White said. “But they were up 44 (horsepower) down at 7,500 (where drivers hit the gas again to start accelerating). And that’s where you make good lap times - from the center of the corner on out.
“Our engine guys jumped on that, and we’ve made tremendous gains over the past two months. We’ll see this weekend if we’ve made any progress.”
However, considering the impressive debut of Chevrolet’s new engine, the R07, which Kevin Harvick drove to victory in Saturday night’s All-Star race, Toyota might still be behind.
White said that Chevy teams have a big edge in that they have the new R07 and “they also have the old SB2 engine to fall back on.”
“We don’t have anything to fall back on,” he said. “Now if we could fall back on our Truck and Busch engine (both series have different engine rules), and look at how it’s running in those series, well, I won’t say I’d guarantee a different landscape in Cup, but it might be a little different, because we’ve got four years of development with that engine, while we’re still learning about this new engine.”
What about Toyota’s new chassis-development project with Waltrip, the one that was supposed to provide improvement at Texas?
“We did a little ‘project car’ over at Michael’s, and we all learned a lot, and we’ve turned it back over to them,” White said. “That’s their car now, and we’re done with that project and moving on. Michael has it here as a backup car.
“We learned a lot about building cars from that, and some of our teams have picked up things from that … and some have their own way of doing things.
“But we’re not stopping there. And we’re going to have to learn more about the car of tomorrow, because it looks like this thing is going that way, and that it may happen sooner rather than later.”
Meaning that NASCAR and some top teams owners are considering a full changeover to the car of tomorrow for 2008, rather than phasing it in through ’09.
“So I don’t think you’ll see us doing a heck of a lot more with the current car, except on the engine side,” White said. “Over the next few months, I think we’ll be doing some car-of-tomorrow projects.... Our teams say they absolutely want the new car. And all these guys need to run their teams like a business and consider budgets.
“Which way NASCAR is leaning, that’s a NASCAR question … but from what we see, there is strong consideration for the car-of-tomorrow to be implemented across the board next year….”
White again discounted any Dale Earnhardt Inc. angle, or Dale Earnhardt Jr. angle, for Toyota, saying he hasn’t talked with Teresa Earnhardt about any deals.
“Realistically this sport needs Dale Earnhardt Jr. on a team where he can win some races,” White says. “Frankly he needs to be in a car with a Bowtie on the front. There is a legacy there, a history.
“And we’re not pursing any new teams. Some teams have approached us, and I’m not ruling out adding a team. But right now we’re at our capacity.”

[obrien]

mmm hopefully they will continue this trend and go back where tey belong.

[jks812]

I think for the most part they'll continue to struggle this year. But I think they'll start making progress next year and they'll be alright. If they ever get it figured out like they did in the truck series, they'll really do okay.

[Souporscotty]

I think they're sandbaggin'.

[Racer X]

Originally Posted by obrien

mmm hopefully they will continue this trend and go back where tey belong.

Okay… I gotta ask this of someone who obviously does like Toyota. Why do you have such a problem with Toyota in Nextel Cup?

[Racer X]

Originally Posted by Souporscotty

I think they're sandbaggin'.

LOL!

[jks812]

I don't have a problem with Toyota being in Nascar and will be glad when they get the bugs worked out and start running good. Hope they'll do as good in cup as they do in the trucks.

[Racer Duck]

It's difficult to start a new operation in NA$CAR. It's even more difficult for a manufacturer to startup in NA$CAR. Dodge had been out for several years when they "came back" and had an "experience bank" to fall back on and, yet, they didn't have instant success...

Toyota has never been here and has no experience. They have some good teams, but without the years and years of experience the other manufacturers have, they'll be behind until they gain it. Right now, in Cup, it's about their equipment, not the talent of their folks.

With consistency from Blaney and Reutimann and occasional flashes from Almendinger and Vickers, they're making progress. They may even win a race this year!

If they would just get rid of the other 3 "drivers" and maybe change their name to something more .. "American"....

[LSC9901]

Originally Posted by Racer Duck

It's difficult to start a new operation in NA$CAR. It's even more difficult for a manufacturer to startup in NA$CAR. Dodge had been out for several years when they "came back" and had an "experience bank" to fall back on and, yet, they didn't have instant success...

Toyota has never been here and has no experience. They have some good teams, but without the years and years of experience the other manufacturers have, they'll be behind until they gain it. Right now, in Cup, it's about their equipment, not the talent of their folks.

With consistency from Blaney and Reutimann and occasional flashes from Almendinger and Vickers, they're making progress. They may even win a race this year!

If they would just get rid of the other 3 "drivers" and maybe change their name to something more .. "American"....

RD this is one area we will disagree on. I think quite highly of Dale Jarrett as a gentleman driver, but I really believe he is past his peak. Mikey ........ what can I say. I really believe he is talentless. He had some success with DEI but that was it. Nothing before and now he cannot even qualify. If some of the other drivers (Toyota) are getting in then it's tough to think that it's the equipment. I will agree totally that Toyota is far from ready to be competitive but they should be able to qualify more often than they actually do. Mikey has made one race out of 12. That's all on him.

[Racer Duck]

Originally Posted by LSC9901

RD this is one area we will disagree on. I think quite highly of Dale Jarrett as a gentleman driver, but I really believe he is past his peak. Mikey ........ what can I say. I really believe he is talentless. He had some success with DEI but that was it. Nothing before and now he cannot even qualify. If some of the other drivers (Toyota) are getting in then it's tough to think that it's the equipment. I will agree totally that Toyota is far from ready to be competitive but they should be able to qualify more often than they actually do. Mikey has made one race out of 12. That's all on him.

We don't disagree .. Jarrett was a good driver back when. But he hasn't shown any speed to speak of this year, nor most of last year in different equipment. Mayfield is also a "used-to-be". I don't think those 3 are helping Toyota get where they want to go .. but then I'm on the outside looking in...

[Quality88]

Originally Posted by Racer Duck

We don't disagree .. Jarrett was a good driver back when. But he hasn't shown any speed to speak of this year, nor most of last year in different equipment.

I'm still holdin on to that last shred of hope... Yates was strugglin with their equipment and engineers. Toyota is just brand new and Waltrip just seems to be puttin out crappy equipment. I believe if say(and it pains me to type this)(may the blue-oval gods spare my soul) he was put into a Hendrick chevy he would do a load better.... because he would have the equipment. I could be wrong though.

[obrien]

Originally Posted by Racer X

Okay… I gotta ask this of someone who obviously does like Toyota. Why do you have such a problem with Toyota in Nextel Cup?

Why should I not have a problem with them being in Nascar? Toyota does nothing for this country, there is nothing american made about them, so why do they belong?

[Mike24]

I'll laugh at ya all when Toyota wins a race next year.

[obrien]

I would sure hope that toyota could win a race with all the money that have wasted just trying to be competitive.

What ever happened to American Pride?

[LSC9901]

Originally Posted by obrien

Why should I not have a problem with them being in Nascar? Toyota does nothing for this country, there is nothing american made about them, so why do they belong?

I'm far from a Toyota in NASCAR fan but I think Toyota adds a little bit to our economy. Check with all of the folks that build Toyota's in the US. I gotta believe they are pretty happy Toyota is here.