It is more likely that teams such as IWX, which won the 2002 Craftsman Truck Series championship with Mike Bliss-but had no outside sponsorship-will be high on Toyota's shopping list.
"I think they proved they could get the job done," says Bliss, who drives for Joe Gibbs in the NASCAR Busch Series this year. "I think they would be far more successful with a decent budget."
Engine/Chassis DesignDevelopment of Toyota's Truck Series entry is centered at TRD, located just outside Los Angeles. It is a state-of-the-art research, development, manufacturing and testing facility, all shielded behind CIA-level security.
It is an all-USA effort," says Aust. "The truck design began with us. What you saw at Daytona...it all was done at Costa Mesa."
The first engines to go into the trucks will come from TRD. Most of the parts will come from American suppliers, with a few pieces produced in Japan. Among those is expected to be the cast-iron engine block. The engine was a "clean sheet of paper" project designed to meet NASCAR's specifications.
"Our approach is probably a bit different than the other manufacturers; we are coming at it from a different point of view," Aust says. "We can design anything from a CART motor to where we are now. We looked at all the other engines available in NASCAR. Our idea is to take the best of each of them and turn it into a Toyota."
While the initial batch of engines will come out of TRD's 31,000 square feet machine shop, Aust predicts that engine building eventually will shift to the Southeast, closer to NASCAR's heartland. "In time there will be the opportunity for other engine shops and individual teams to build their own engines, using parts supplied by TRD," Aust says.
The engineers who designed the IRL motor and the CART motor are the same ones who designed the NASCAR engine. "It doesn't have the same level of technology," Aust says. "We've gone from building a 2.65 turbo CART motor that operated on 34 inches [Hg] of boost to building a 3.5-liter, normally aspirated, fuel-injected engine for the IRL. Now we are designing a 5.6-liter, 360 cubic-inch carburetor engine."
Some call it "reverse engineering" or using state-of-the-art technology to build a better dinosaur-one that uses pushrods instead of overhead camshafts, no less.
"Certainly, it is a much less complicated motor, but we will come into the game against other manufacturers who have been building this engine for years and years, and are at the optimum," Aust says. "All we want to do is come into the game at a competitive level."
The truck chassis have existed for nearly a year. They were in the wind tunnel late last fall and will continue to be massaged until the 2004 season opens.
White oversaw the design of the bodywork, which was done by an outside firm. Despite its Toyota badges, it is almost identical to the Ford F-150 currently in the Truck Series. "Bodywork is not our forte," Aust says. "We aren't experts in body design. Our strong point is in engineering."
Future PlansWhite says Toyota's eventual plans are to have its cars racing everywhere from Winston Cup at Daytona to Evergreen Speedway near Seattle, with local racers able to buy crate engines ready to drop into new or rebodied chassis.
Aust is a bit more vague on the company's plans.
"We are committed to the Truck Series. As far as Busch or Winston Cup, it is nice to look ahead. At this point we have no established timeline," Aust says. "It is obviously something to think about, but we need to be sure we can compete at the Truck level before we think about moving up. Certainly the competition farther up doesn't get any easier."
Toyota Racing In AmericaSports Cars/Open Wheel1967: Joined with Carroll Shelby to develop a race-ready version of its Toyota 2000 GT for Sports Car Club of America competition.