Toyota 'frustrated' through first quarter of Cup season

RICHMOND, Va. -- If you think Toyota's Nextel Cup Series teams are frustrated by their performance in the first quarter of the season, you'd be correct. But it's nothing compared to how the manufacturer feels.

"It's frustrating that people have difficulty learning from history -- but I'm not the first guy to say that," said Lee White, senior vice president of Toyota Racing Development (TRD). "You can only go by results, in which case [the first quarter grade] is not very good."

White's assessment is based on the past three seasons for the Toyota Tundra in the Craftsman Truck Series. Toyota entered the Truck Series in 2004 and, since gaining its first victory in July 2004, has scored 29 wins in less than four seasons and last year won the drivers' and manufacturers' championships.

To do that, Toyota has exercised a "one manufacturer / one team" approach with all its organizations, to good effect.

But last fall at the Homestead-Miami Speedway finale, White expressed concern over Toyota's Nextel Cup teams' ability to exercise the same level of cooperation.

An exclamation point to the current feeling in the Toyota camp, which certainly doesn't reflect the aura of one of the car builder's former ad campaigns, came when Wyler Racing, a leading Craftsman Truck Series program that won the Daytona season opener with Jack Sprague, built a Car of Tomorrow, tested it extensively and came to its first Cup show and succeeded Friday.

Former Cup winner Johnny Benson, whose last Cup start came in a Bill Davis Racing Dodge in October 2005, put the Wylers' car into the field in 31st.

"They're one of our truck teams that work very well with us, within our system," White said. "And we're still trying to develop that system within our Cup teams. So maybe in that regard there's a message here: This is how we work, you know?"

For Toyota in Nextel Cup, the systems the teams have in place, independent of the manufacturer, are hardly working.

Nine races into 2007, White's fears about a lack of inter-team cooperation are fully realized; though he did admit "it took us a year and a half to get the truck teams to do it, at that level. It may take us two years to get that level of cooperation at the Cup level."

Toyota won four Truck races in 2004 and has won four of five this season. Over the last two seasons Toyota has won 53 percent of the Truck races.

"So far it hasn't worked in Cup -- it doesn't," White said. "And the reason for that is the elevated level of investment, there's much more money at stake, there's bigger exposure, bigger egos and the fact that every team is competing with each other for that last spot."

Only two Toyota teams, Dave Blaney's No. 22 Bill Davis Racing team and Dale Jarrett's No. 44 Michael Waltrip Racing outfit, started the season with guaranteed starting positions under the current system that locks-in starting positions for the top 35 teams in car owner points.

When 2007 points went into effect for determining guaranteed spots, none of the Toyota teams were in the top 35.

Engine ruins top-five for Reutimann

Proof of Toyota's unfortunate luck can be seen at Talladega where David Reutimann was putting together a solid top-five finish until his engine blew with four laps left.

• Complete story, click here

"It's the same effect if they were all competing for first, or fifth," White said of the current level of competition. "Since they're all competing for 43rd -- just to get in the race -- the competition is absolutely fierce. So it's very challenging."

Raybestos Rookie of the Year candidate David Reutimann has dealt with the pressure best of Waltrip's three drivers, qualifying for seven of 10 races. But he admitted it's a strain.

"The thing that screws with your head and changes your perspective on everything is all you're worried about is outrunning those [non-guaranteed] guys," Reutimann said. "And after you make sure you outrun those guys you're like 'Well, where did we end up overall?'

"So it's completely opposite of what normal people do."

Team Red Bull GM Marty Gaunt echoed Reutimann's concerns about qualifying and said his team has suffered with consistency while trying to concentrate on getting into races in a tough environment.

"We've put a lot of effort into our Car of Tomorrow program and we hope that continues to pay off," said Gaunt while watching A.J. Allmendinger score the two-car team's best qualifying performance, 13th, while making his third COT race in four tries.

Unfortunately, Allmendinger has failed to make all the speedway and intermediate events, a total of six others. Brian Vickers, on the other hand, while scoring the team's and Toyota's best three finishes, has missed three of the four COT races and also missed Talladega, the venue where he scored his inaugural Cup victory last fall.

Waltrip Racing general manager Ty Norris and Jarrett, one of the team's three Cup drivers, in an hour-long media briefing agreed with White in that they -- and team owner / driver Waltrip -- knew what they were getting into when they decided to go with Toyota.

But White was pretty honest in his assessment of what might amount to the entire 2007 season.

"We're not here for results in the short term -- we're here for results in two or three years," White said. "Just like we've said right along, it's going to take a long time to get there -- and this is very, very difficult and very, very challenging.

"So we just look for steady progress as we move along. No, we're not happy with [the progress], but all you do is go back to work every day and keep on working."

Norris said time would be a better judge of his organization.

"For us to be judged so much in the first eight races, it is what it is," Norris said. "There's not a team with the Toyota mark on it that is real proud of their program. We all have a lot of work to do.

"The best thing we know is we're with the right manufacturer. There's not another manufacturer who will put the support behind us like they have. We're in the right place -- we just have to hold our breaths to see if we can get through this first year."

After nine Nextel Cup races and 10 qualifying sessions, Toyota's success rate of even getting into the races is only 51 percent. Only Blaney's Camry team seems to have figured out the art.

Blaney has the marque's best qualifying run, seventh at Bristol. He's qualified in the top 15 five times in nine starts, but also has one DNQ.

But besides Blaney, Toyota's other six full-time teams total only five top-20 starts between them.

Borland let go as crew chief for Jarrett

More personnel changes at Michael Waltrip Racing as Matt Borland was let go as Dale Jarrett's crew chief after the race at Talladega.

• Complete story, click here

And the results column is far worse. The 33 starts Toyota drivers made in the first nine races resulted in one top-10 finish and two others between 11th and 20th.

Less than mediocre performance is also underscored by inconsistency. Vickers' No. 83 Team Red Bull outfit has all three top finishes, but the team has failed to make six of 10 races.

Waltrip did well to make the season-opening Daytona 500 on the heels of a debilitating set of penalties for a cheating infraction before Bud Pole Qualifying.

But since then Waltrip is on a string of nine consecutive DNQs, and the fact that many of them have been by infinitesimal margins doesn't matter. He's still one-for-10.

Jarrett had a string of 424 consecutive starts broken Friday when he failed to make the Crown Royal presents the Jim Stewart 400. It was the first race in which Jarrett has lacked the safety net of a past champion's provisional starting position.

In the first nine races, he qualified on speed twice, using a champion's provisional six times -- his allotment for the entire season -- and per the rulebook as a past champion when qualifying was rained out at Texas.

At Richmond, Burdett, who was named his crew chief Thursday, was not present, when the team decided to keep Burdett at the shop to prepare a new chassis that's a cooperative effort between MWR and TRD.

"Maybe I'm not giving these crew chiefs the information that they need [but] we have to have that supporting group to make any of them good," Jarrett said. "Just like I'm no better than the cars I'm in or Jeff Gordon's no better than the cars he's driving -- and it wasn't too long ago that he was almost written off.

"The thing is we have to do some things here and make some moves to make our organization better as a whole. This isn't just about [my] car -- it's about the entire Michael Waltrip Racing organization and trying to strengthen it [because] we have a lot of good people and are trying to get everyone situated.

"It was easy to sit down last August, September and October and say 'This is going to take time for all this to happen.' That sounded really good. We are competitors and we want it to happen now [but] the fact is that it's not going to happen right now.

"We're racing against organizations that have been out here for a long time who have a solid foundation, and we're trying to make that happen and get that done. It's more difficult than what you can imagine -- it's probably more difficult than I imagined.

"Sometimes, you have to take a step back before you can move forward and I think that's what we're trying to do."

Jarrett went so far, Friday afternoon, to admit that he understood that his team might miss some races this summer.

"I sat down with Jason yesterday and he said 'Fridays have become my worst day because there is a possibility of missing the race,'" Jarrett said. "This isn't about a race-to-race case. Do we want to make every race? Certainly. This is about getting to be a good organization with three good race teams and three good racecars by the time we get to the last 10 races this season.

"If we don't accomplish that then we're going to be in trouble for 2008. The hard facts are that we have a lot of work to do."

Jarrett's deal, which was anticipated to be his final Cup contract, is set to end after the 2008 season.

Reutimann and Davis have both cited the presence of ill luck that has tainted their teams' efforts. And Davis, in particular said he wasn't in a mood to wait for his teams' performance to pick up -- he claimed Blaney was already there, and that his newest driver, Jeremy Mayfield was showing steady improvement.

"We have not run that badly, and where we are in the points with Dave's car is based purely on bad luck," Davis said of Blaney's 38th place in the driver standings. "He's been qualifying real well, and I think we're about to see another one tonight, so I'm sure we'll get back on track."

Blaney responded with a 10th place run.

Last weekend at Talladega, Reutimann appeared headed for a sure top-10 finish, and possibly a top-five when his car's engine broke.

"We had a good run last week and you all know that didn't pan out," Reutimann said. "It's not for lack of effort. I'm not disappointed in my guys or Toyota or anything like that, I'm just disappointed in the results we've had [and] we need to get better results."

Norris said both Toyota and Waltrip's team sponsor, NAPA, have expressed confidence and support.

"They always told us that the Toyota way is to be confident and patient, and have a long-term goal," Norris said. "They are an honorable company and they remain loyal to their teams.

"They told that to us on a number of occasions and [Toyota's chairman] explained to us that he has a 100-year plan. We said we love his 100-year plan and we'd love to be a part of it -- if we can get through our 100-day plan.

"They have been remarkable and would do anything we asked. They have been amazingly patient. We appreciate that. They don't put any pressure on us, any more than we put on ourselves [and] we definitely put a lot on ourselves."

Norris said NAPA, which has been rumored to be exploring other options within the Cup garage, would "honor our contract -- which is two years -- with options to go beyond that. They've expressed that to us a number of times over the past week."

In the end, Norris said his organization was comprised of racers and, provided it could get a competent technical director in place, was poised to reach a more competitive level. But he said without that position being filled, which was where they had hoped to place Jarrett's former crew chief Matt Borland, who departed this week, they would not be able to compete at the level they needed to be.

"We are not looking for sympathy," Norris said. "This is the hardest time to enter NASCAR with the level of competition and the qualifying rules. So, all the people who said a year ago that we were crazy -- you were right.

"I think if Michael Waltrip was a quitter he would have probably given up a long time ago when he was a driver, but he didn't give up. He got a chance to do it right and he won the Daytona 500 twice.

"He's not going to give up. We're not looking for sympathy -- we're just looking for people to look at the facts before making an opinion."