Toyota to Make NASCAR Debut at Daytona 500

Daytona International Speedway is the 2.5 mile oval where Toyota will make it's first competitive appearance in the major league of American stock car racing. Toyota Racing Development is making a multi-team effort with 1999 Champion Dale Jarrett and rookie David Reutimann on one team and Jeremy Mayfield and Dave Blaney driving for Bill Davis Racing. Red Bull is fueling another team whose cars will be guided by Brian Vickers and A.J. Allmendinger.
There are 19 Chevrolets, 10 Fords, 4 Plymouths, 3 Buicks, 3 Dodges, 3 Mercurys, 3 Oldsmobiles and 3 Pontiacs racing in the Daytona 500 that will be the first one that a "foreign" manufacturer has entered as a supplier of the "stock cars" that the various teams disassemble and remanufacture into racing cars.

With the current conditions in the American auto industry with the "Big Three" consolidating their businesses, closing assembly and engine plants and firing thousands of workers, there is not much money to be spent on auto racing. This is a big concern in the "pits" (where the cars are worked on during the race and resupplied with tires) that Toyota Racing Development will be able to overwhem the other teams in NASCAR with "cubic dollars", buying the services of the most experienced and innovative crew chiefs and mechanics. (Actually they are engineers that work with aluminum and steel rather than laptops.)

Actually, Toyota has become more of an American car company over the years. The Toyota Camry street model that the NASCAR racecars is fabricated from is assembled in the United States. The Ford Fusion, Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Dodge Charger are made in Canada or Mexico.

At the team level, most of the money comes from corporate sponsors as varied as American business, M and M's candy to the Home Depot are represented.

The oil company Sunoco is the official fuel supplier and every racer is supplied with gasoline with a consistant octane rating so that none of the competitors gain an unfair advantage from using a more powerful fuel.

There is money to be made as a team owner. Jack Roush has made $210 million in 16 years as a racing team owner but the profit margin is only 2 to 4 percent a year, that is why there is such concern that Toyota's entry into NASCAR could drive up the cost of driver's and crew chief's salaries so that running a team becomes a money losing proposition for more teams. (That is where the corporate sponsors come in for the teams that don't win races consistantly.)

An important development is NASCARS Research and Development's Car of Tomorrow which will provide a standardized vehicle engineered with safety as an important consideration, at the same time keeping the cost of building and maintaining race cars from rising so much that the business side of stock car racing becomes unmanagable.

The Car of Tomorrow will make it's first appearance in the Food City 500 in Bristol, Tennessee Motor Speedway and at the other shorter tracks on the NASCAR circuit. This will be the practical testing of the concept of a "universal car"that can be used at every track by swapping the components that are influenced by the various tracks differing characteristics.

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series was won in 2006 by Toyota, so there is a reason for the concern in the pits about the new brand on the oval coming in and overwhelming the other manufacturers teams with cubic dollars, but Toyota is known in the newmotorcity for cautious spending and careful expansion into the new markets it has entered.