Lee White doesn't swing wrenches anymore. He doesn't change tires. He doesn't build engines, tune shocks, or massage sheetmetal into aerodynamic shapes that use the wind to go faster. White doesn't do any of those things in the NASCAR garage.
Instead, White gets things done. He's the guy who walks through the Craftsman Truck Series garage, looking at everything from bodywork to body language to see which teams are on their game and which are struggling. Then he goes to work.
White's a fixer. He is the guy Toyota hired a decade ago to salvage its then-embarrassing effort in the Champ Car Series and massage it into one that dominated open-wheel racing in America. But that took time. Years of it.
This time, White doesn't have much of that fleeting commodity.
In Daytona Beach last February, he sat in the leather-lined motorcoach that serves as the rolling office for Toyota Racing Development and considered everything he had to accomplish in under a year.
It was the final day of practice for the Daytona 500 and 12 months-give or take a few sleepless nights-before White and TRD were scheduled to debut the Toyota Camry Nextel Cup car in the 2007 Daytona 500.
"It is a huge undertaking," White says. "I've never before done anything on a scale like this."
White insists on reviewing the past before talking about the future. It was 1998 when White first talked to NASCAR about racing stock cars. He and Toyota officials knew there may be resistance to a Japanese brand on American ovals, so the company's first entry was in the Goody's Dash Series, where it took on American compacts powered by V-6 engines with Toyota's four-cylinder twin overhead cam motor.
Bill Davis, with his race...
Bill Davis, with his race team already in place, is expected to be the company's star player next season. Photo by Jerry F. Boone
"We had never even run one of those engines with a carburetor before," he says. "It was all new technology to us."
The Next Step In the end, it was a success. More than victories and the 2003 championship, Toyota proved to NASCAR that it could be depended upon to play within its rule book.
That was important in 2002, when White went to the Brickyard 400 and talked to NASCAR about stepping up to the next level of competition to build a chassis for the Craftsman Truck Series.
While the Goody's Dash program was a way to get Toyota's name in front of NASCAR, it needed the Truck Series to get its Tundra known to potential buyers.
"That effort was sales driven," says Les Unger, who oversees all of Toyota's racing programs in the United States. Toyota builds the fullsize truck in Indiana and is planning to increase Tundra output when a new plant in Texas goes online this year.
"We simply want to capture a larger part of that truck market," says Unger.
The Camry, meanwhile, is already the best selling car in the nation. It has been for years. What's Toyota got to gain in the higher profile Cup Series?
"Brand awareness," answers Unger. "We are always looking for ways to reach a different segment of the population in a cost-effective way. The focus for the Nextel Cup effort is connecting with the NASCAR audience and bringing to them our company name."
White's approach is a bit less market driven.
"We are an American auto manufacturer," he says matter-of-factly. "We belong in America's premier racing series. It's really that simple."
Simple, in an unusual way. NASCAR has never before seen an organization that operates quite like Toyota. Its approach to racing and relationship with its teams is unique among the four manufacturers in NASCAR. White says that relationship is often misunderstood, even within Toyota's organization.