Toyota's emphasis lies far beyond Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Race winner Jack Sprague helped Toyota take four of the top-five spots in Friday night's Craftsman Truck Series event. Dave Blaney drove his Camry to a second-place finish Saturday in the carmaker's debut on the Busch circuit. NASCAR's newest manufacturer enjoyed quite a week at Daytona International Speedway.

Except for the Nextel Cup Series.

A Speedweeks that began with Toyota's flagship program facing cheating allegations ended Sunday, when Dale Jarrett's 22nd-place finish was the best among the four Camrys that made the Daytona 500 field. Blaney and David Reutimann finished well down the chart after getting caught up in accidents, while Michael Waltrip brought his scandal-plagued car home in 30th.

But afterward, as the crowd filed out of the giant frontstretch grandstand and night settled over the speedway, Toyota executives seemed anything but disappointed.

"Absolutely not," said Lee White, senior vice president of Toyota Racing Development. "I look at that as, OK, it is what it is, and we keep working on our stuff. This program for this year is going to be about constant improvement. It's a fundamental principal of our company, and we hope to go to Fontana and get a few more guys in the race, and go from there."

A restrictor-plate track like Daytona might not be the best place to judge the Camry's 2007 potential. NASCAR competes on the big venues only four times annually, and White said plate facilities haven't been Toyota's prime emphasis. The next two Nextel Cup tracks, 2-mile California and 1.5-mile Las Vegas, may prove a more accurate barometer.

"We're only going to race this car three more times, and we're done. Right now, we're not focused on this program, on current-car plate racing, at all," White said.

"What's gone into it so far to get here is not bad, if you look at the chassis dyno numbers that came back and everything. When the teams come back in July, and go to Talladega hopefully with a little more experience, they'll do a little bit better. But our focus is more on open-track mile-and-a-halfs with the current car, and the Car of Tomorrow is certainly important to us." (Continued)