Toyota ready to contend in second Cup season
by JORGE A. MONDACA, FOXSports.com
The manufacturer — whose headquarters for its Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. division is based in nearby Torrance, Calif. — considers this weekend a "home game." But their anticipation isn't only about being close to home, Toyota's executives and teams are excited about this weekend for one major reason: They feel they can win no matter in all three divisions.
That's no surprise in the Craftsman Truck Series, where they have already captured a driver's championship (Todd Bodine, 2006), are the two-time defending Manufacturer's champions, and have 39 victories to date. But being considered legitimate contenders in the Nationwide Series and Sprint Cup Series races is a big turnaround from their rookie campaigns last year.
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It goes to show just how much a difference a year makes in NASCAR.
Humbling 2007
After their performance in the season-opening Daytona 500 last weekend, where Toyota teams scored two top-five performances and combined to lead 137 of 200 laps, it seems like a long time ago that Toyota was looked at as the weakling in Sprint Cup competition.
But in fact, it was only a year ago.
The Japanese-based manufacturer made its Sprint Cup Series debut in 2007 at the Great American Race. But even before the drop of the green flag, many observers inside and out of Toyota questioned whether they had bitten off more than they could chew.
Aside from continuing to deal with their Truck operation launches in 2004, Toyota expanded into the Nationwide Series (formerly Busch Series) and the Cup Series. Not only was it a major challenge to enter two new series in one season, but there were other obstacles such as the implementation of the Car of Tomorrow in Cup competition, which forced Toyota teams to focus on two cars at once in the premier division of stock car racing.
Some of the other hurdles included the creation of a new nose for the trucks and dealing with two different engine combinations — one in Cup and another for the Nationwide and Truck program. Plus, there's been the fostering of relatively new teams such as Michael Waltrip Racing and Team Red Bull, a conscious decisions made by Toyota officials who felt it was a better long-term strategy to align with new teams versus trying to poach from other manufacturers.
"That was a huge undertaking," said Jim Aust, vice president of motorsports for Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. and president and CEO of Toyota Racing Development. "If you step back and look at it, you'd probably say that if we knew all that stuff beforehand, that's an awful lot to consider at one time. But on the other hand, we had the truck program up and running and it was successful — we were winning races and poles.
"The Car of Tomorrow was an element that we really didn't need to have thrown in there. If we could have started in 2008 with the COT being the only car we had to worry about, that would have been probably much better."
At the beginning, things did not go smoothly. Besides having to deal with the cheating scandal at Daytona where an illegal substance was found in the engine of Michael Waltrip's Camry after qualifying, Toyota and its teams had to struggle to qualify into races because six of its seven teams were outside the top 35 in owner points to start the season.
In NASCAR Sprint Cup competition, teams in the top 35 in the owners standings are automatically given a starting berth in races no matter how they perform in qualifying, leaving the remaining teams to battle for the remaining eight spots each week.
"It was an impossible task," said former Cup champion Dale Jarrett, driver of the No. 44 UPS Toyota. "Impossible for Toyota's side to think they could be remotely competitive from the beginning because there were too many things involved to make that happen."
The art of Kaizen
So how did Toyota and its teams rise from a disappointing 2007 to where they are now? In a word: Kaizen.
Kaizen, a Japanese term commonly translated as "continuous improvement", has been the ethos for Toyota's Motorsports operation. The way kaizen is achieved by the various teams in all three levels of NASCAR racing is by working together as one as much as possible.
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"Our philosophy from the very beginning is to get all the teams to work together and share ideas as opposed to each one trying to find the same horsepower or try to reduce the drag or improve the aerodynamics," said Aust. "If everybody can share the ideas, we are going to get to the point where we need to be much faster.
"We provide information, teams will share information, but the teams don't have to take the information we provide for them whether its about tires, shocks, whatever. Teams can do whatever they want. We say 'Here's our best information and our data, you can use it however you like.'
"That's the way the truck program works, and that's the way we initiated the car program. We struggled with that somewhat last year, but I think everybody bought into it. After there are gains from doing that, people have a better understanding of it and are more apt to participate in it."
Although Aust admits that the Cup program was about "14 to 15 races" behind schedule, results improved both in the Cup and Nationwide Series as the year went on because of the way the teams worked together.
On the Cup side, the majority of the six drivers who attempted the full season for Toyota had their best performances in the second half of the year, capped by Dave Blaney's third-place result at Talladega in October. In the Nationwide Series, Toyota's two triumphs (one each for Jason Leffler and David Reutimann) came after the midway point of the season as well.
"I used to think the changes I would see in the Truck Series were pretty phenomenal. Now I just think that's Toyota," said Reutimann, driver of the No. 00 Aaron's Toyota in the Cup Series and No. 99 Aaron's Toyota in the Nationwide Series. "You get used to the fact that they are always working. They're racers, they're motor guys — that's what they do and they hate getting beat.
"If their cars aren't running up front, they are going to figure out why and (find) ways to make it better. That's what they've done — you're seeing more of the Toyota mentality that they have to work, work, work until you can come up with a scenario that works for your teams."
A major boost
Even with the continuous improvement from the Toyota teams in the Cup Series, they received a major boost when it was announced that Joe Gibbs Racing, with three Cup championships to its credit, would be joining the fold in 2008.
"When we looked at our program we thought that by Year Three we would be in contention for a championship — and that was before the addition of Joe Gibbs Racing. That's going to be moved ahead by a year now with the addition of that team.
"The Gibbs organization has come on board with the outlook that they are willing to share information and work with the other teams. As we see that unfold throughout the year, I think we'll see our entire group become stronger. If we can accomplish that, I think we'll have a very successful 2008."
JGR demonstrated buy-in to the Toyota teamwork philosophy during preseason testing when several of their crew were seen working alongside team members from the various other Toyota-affiliated teams.
Combine Gibbs' knowledge, their willingness to follow the Toyota teamwork philosophy and their past success with the gains made by the Toyota teams heading into 2008 and you can see why optimism reigns supreme heading into not only this weekend's action in California, but for the entire 2008 campaign.
"We've already derived benefit from the addition of JGR to Toyota and that benefit is that they know how much power they had here last year when they raced Chevrolets, which was the dominant car," Waltrip said in preseason testing. "They know what kind of aero they had and they expect to have the same type of package with Toyota. They're not going to settle for any less — they're not going to give up any power or aero to race a Toyota. They want them to be the same or better."
"They're going to be in better shape to win races than us right off the bat, but we think we can learn so much from them that it just accelerated the opportunity for us to be successful by 100 percent, and I've felt that way since the first day that I heard it. A lot of people were saying that the Gibbs team was going to come over and take over Toyota. I think there's strength in numbers. We've got three really strong cars that we add to the line-up and I think you'll see with the support of Toyota being refined and with Gibbs being here we'll be up to speed quicker than what you might think."
So following a year of learning, how would Toyota define success in 2008 Cup competition?
"We'd like to win some races," Aust said. "We think we are going to win some races, it's just a matter of how many. I would like to throw out the number eight — and have some teams in the (championship-deciding) Chase. Therein lies success."
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