Toyota Nextel Cup Cars - Pressing The Throttle

Ford, GM, and Chrysler generally provide money and technical expertise to individual teams, but allow each one to go its own way to develop engines and chassis. It is the reason operations such as Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Richard Childress Racing have their own programs to develop and build Chevrolet engines.

In contrast, when Toyota launched its Craftsman Truck program three years ago, it decided to build its own engines and chassis at TRD's shops in High Point, North Carolina, so the company could roll out race-ready trucks for its teams.

"People interpreted that to mean we have factory teams," White says. "That isn't the case at all."

White says when Toyota announced plans to enter the Craftsman Truck Series, it was flooded with inquiries from just about every owner-or everyone who would like to be an owner-in NASCAR.

"Some of them were very reputable operations and others were from drivers and owners who had some regional racing experience and wanted to move up," he says. Everyone in racing, it seemed, had a yen for Toyota's yen.

"People had the impression we were going to open the financial floodgates and everyone was going to end up wealthy," White says.

It took months to pare that list of applicants down to those White and TRD felt offered the best opportunity to become successful. Then the planning began in earnest.

"Toyota essentially went to its team owners and asked us what it could do to help us the most," says Bill Davis, whose race operation fields Tundras in the Craftsman Truck Series. "What they decided on was to lease us race-ready trucks, and then let owners go out and concentrate on getting sponsorship and running the team. That allowed us to concentrate on everything but the hardware. We could put our effort into getting good people and creating a sound financial base for a team instead of building engines and fabricating chassis."

"It's a fantastic way to do it," adds Davis, who will be joined next season by Michael Waltrip Racing and Red Bull Racing to form the three Toyota Nextel Cup teams. Waltrip has announced that Dale Jarrett, the 1999 Cup champion and a three-time winner of the Daytona 500, will drive one of Waltrip's entries next season.

White says TRD South worked with Toyota's production experts to develop shortcuts to build and repair trucks at High Point as efficiently as a small manufacturer.

"We had some of Toyota's production people look at what we were doing and asked them to offer suggestions," he says. "They are the experts at doing things efficiently. Typically, bodies are hung by artisans who shape every piece of metal individually. It is a very time-consuming process, and it probably makes sense if you are building only seven or eight trucks a season.

"When we began, it took 10 days to hang the bodies on the trucks. Using Toyota's suggestions, we've been able to trim that back to just four days. When we take the trucks to the wind tunnel, the difference from one to another is almost imperceptible."