At first glance, it may seem to be an odd marriage-a major auto manufacturer headquartered in Japan aligns with a trucker from Arkansas to form a motorsports alliance. But Toyota, in laying the foundation for its NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series program, teamed with long-time Cup team owner Bill Davis to form a research and development center located next door to Davis' shops in High Point, North Carolina. The center opened in 2003.
Toyota Racing Development (TRD) is the brain trust for Toyota's racing achievements. The TRD program began in 1979 as an arm of Toyota, selling everything from appearance packages to headers and shift knobs for Toyota-based products.
Over time and through its involvement with different types of racing, the TRD program has become one of the leading research and development centers for high-performance racing in the world. The High Point location and the association with Bill Davis Racing was the next logical step for TRD, after Toyota achieved success in sports car, open-wheel, and off-road racing. Plus, according to Lee White, group vice president and general manager of Toyota Racing Development, a foray into NASCAR made good marketing sense.
Toyota's traditional motorsports ventures sometimes offered little for the average consumer to relate to, says White. "So we at TRD realized in order for us to have solid marketing value for a motorsports endeavor, we needed to do something more mainstream, and certainly in the last five or six years NASCAR is the mainstream motorsports activity in this country," he added.
TRD EastKnown as TRD East, Toyota's Research and Development center in High Point is a smaller version of its main facility located in Costa Mesa, California, and will serve as the cornerstone for Toyota's research, development, and production of engines and bodies for all of its Truck Series teams.
In what is termed a technical partnership, Bill Davis Racing (BDR) is responsible for assisting in the construction of Toyota Tundra race trucks and the building of the NASCAR-spec Tundra Racing V-8 engine. BDR is also competing in the Craftsman Truck Series for the first time while fielding trucks for rookie driver Shelby Howard and Truck Series veteran Bill Lester.
"We needed a technical and business partner in this area to put us close to the teams, to put us close to NASCAR, to put us close to the culture, and to teach us the NASCAR way of doing things," White explains of TRD's alignment with Davis, who made his fortune as the owner of a trucking company based in Arkansas. "Hopefully what we can do is integrate our engineering expertise and marry the two together so in two or three years we have a program that not only meets and competes regularly with the other manufacturers but is capable of defeating them on a regular basis."
BDR is just one of four, two-truck teams competing under the Toyota banner this year. Three-time Winston Cup champion and FOX TV Sports analyst Darrell Waltrip, owner of Waltrip Racing Inc., is also part of the Toyota fold and provides Tundras for himself and newcomer David Reutimann. Waltrip plans to compete on a part-time basis while Reutimann is set to run a full schedule.
Innovative Motorsports Inc. (IMI), founded by George deBidart in 1998, is competing in its first Craftsman Truck Series season under Toyota after six years in the Busch Series. Five-time NASCAR Goody's Dash Series Champion Robert Huffman and Hank Parker Jr. are IMI's drivers.
Bang Racing, formed by owner Alex Meshkin in 2003, is in its inaugural season in the Truck Series. Meshkin also has teamed with former Cup series crew chief and FOX Sports analyst Larry McReynolds and has former Truck Series' champions Mike Skinner and Travis Kvapil in his trucks.
Concerns In NASCARToyota's initial entry into NASCAR raised several questions among Truck Series teams and owners. It even sent shockwaves through the Cup garage, with most speculation focusing on the budget Toyota would bring with it.
Bobby Hamilton, a Truck Series team owner, says that it's not always about the money, however. "There's a lot to do with just having good people these days instead of just spending money left and right to hire a boat load of people," he says. "And NASCAR is a little different [from other racing series] because a lot of it is not computerized and the technology becomes more mechanical than electronic, and things like that.
"So it limits not the amount of spending, but where you spend your money-and in our business it's not what you have, it's what you have right. So you can spend a boat load of money and still not do anything."
White, however, dismisses the idea of excessive spending by Toyota, and explains that even before its entry into the sport, Toyota evaluated the budgets of existing truck teams and was also well informed by NASCAR on the fiscal approach expected of the automaker.
"We've been very sensitive to the issue of spending money," says White. "We did not want to come into the series and tip it upside down. It was relatively fragile when we started to look at it. When you think back two years ago, the big player at that time was Dodge, and the NASCAR folks had us look at what they called the Dodge model. And that was how Dodge supported not only the teams, but they also supported the series.
"They supported it with advertising, and they sponsored some races and so on. So we said that we will basically duplicate that, and we started out with that."
As far as a team concept, White adds, "We looked at 83 teams that approached us. We didn't approach a single team. We had several experienced truck teams that we were extremely interested in, and they thought it took a Cup-type budget to race the trucks. Not only did we not agree with that, NASCAR didn't agree with that. I was taken to the woodshed on one occasion and it was explained to me that NASCAR would not look favorably on us flashing a lot of cash into the Truck Series and upsetting the balance from top to bottom.
"We looked at what we thought were reasonable budgets, and as you know, the Tundra brand is sponsoring a couple of trucks, and the level that we are sponsoring those trucks is very equal to what we thought the level was a year ago.
"Its not exorbitant at all, so that's the approach we've had in trucks."
Line In The SandToyota is the No. 1 selling car manufacturer in North America, and with its entry into the Truck Series, the overseas giant has drawn a proverbial line in the sand.
"In my opinion, the Truck Series is now the manufacturer's shootout location in NASCAR racing," says White. "This is where it is going to happen between the manufacturers. Toyota is the best selling car in America. We would like to sell more trucks . . . The other manufacturers make their profits selling trucks, and they're not about to give it up, and they're not about to back away from the Truck Series and let us have it.
"So this series is going to be exciting and it's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be tough competition on the track, off the track, and in the marketplace."
Hamilton says Dodge already understood the importance of the Truck Series and was providing wind tunnel support-he had 19 wind tunnel dates last year-and technical support, via two engineering groups of 40 people, before Toyota entered the series.
"I think Toyota coming in really pushed the buttons with the other two manufacturers," says Hamilton of Ford and Chevrolet.
NASCAR teams generally receive support from manufacturers but are mostlyresponsible for the majority of their research and development, testing, and production.
Toyota, however, has brought a whole new approach to the sport by providing all the research, development, and production of engines, chassis, and bodies for their teams.
"We believe that race teams should race, that the engine professionals should develop the engines. And-if possible, now-we're expanding into helping engineer the race vehicle," explains White. "That's a new business strategy for the future. We've never been vehicle development engineers, so this group of six or seven guys that we're assembling is something completely new for us.
"We're going to be doing aerodynamic development, chassis development, vehicle dynamics, vehicle simulation, vehicle compliance, tire modeling, and those are things that this group will work hand in hand with Todd Holbert [of Bill Davis Racing] and his guys on the design and development of our truck."
In addition to a new production scheme, Toyota has also brought a new management format to NASCAR, using engineers from other forms of racing.
"We knew that the Truck Series-the level of investment by the teams and the level of competency by the teams-is not the same as the Busch Series and certainly not the same as Cup, so it appeared to us that there was an opportunity here for us to integrate, supply, and then construct technology and so on," says White.
"I will tell you that they're not just NASCAR guys. We've brought them in from every discipline from around the motorsports industry [and] they're not just Toyota engineers. These guys are racing professionals. They're from Formula One, they're from CART, they're from INDY, they're from NASCAR Nextel Cup, and now they're in High Point and they're going to support everything that TRD is involved in.
"Not only will they be doing simulations for our truck program, they will be doing simulations for the Indy 500, so believe me, there are a lot of cross pollination benefits there, and it will pay off and it will raise the level of what we offer our truck teams. These are things that no truck team has the budget to be able to go out and do. We hope to be able to develop it to the point that it will work. It remains to be seen whether it will be successful or not, but I can promise you we are going to try."
The Cup FutureThe lingering question that still surrounds Toyota's involvement in NASCAR is if and when the manufacturer will make the jump into Busch or Cup, while White remains insistent that, for now, it's strictly "a truck operation."
"Someday we would like to be in Cup, but like I said, right now it's a truck program," says White. "If we ever go to Cup, it will be because we met our objective and we didn't embarrass ourselves our first year.
"We would like to win some races before the end of the year. We would like to contend for championships in 2005 and 2006. We would like to demonstrate to our marketing group that there is real payback and real pull-through value to competing in the NASCAR Truck Series. And we would like to demonstrate to the NASCAR fans that we're a good citizen of this series and that we can be good for NASCAR racing even if we move on to Busch or Cup.
"It would be an agreement between Toyota and the NASCAR organization before that would ever happen. [But] at this point, it's a truck program. There is no schedule, no plan, no budget to go beyond that at this point."