Atlanta race will always be known as Toyota's first win

HAMPTON, Ga. -- J.D. Gibbs listened intently on his headset, pacing back and forth behind the No. 18 pit stall. He grabbed one earpiece to press it closer. Then he slowly made his way through the crowd to the bottom of the yellow pit box.

Just then, Kyle Busch's No. 18 came into sight off of Turn 4 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Crew chief Steve Addington stood up and turned around. And by the time the checkered flag waved, Gibbs sprang up the top rung of the ladder, slapped high-fives with Addington and one-by-one hugged every pit crew member dressed in brown.

Busch, despite wrangling with a loose racecar and coming off corners nearly sideways every lap, had won the first Sprint Cup Series race for Toyota.

The victory was the first for a foreign manufacturer in NASCAR's top series since June 13, 1954, when Al Keller drove a Jaguar to Victory Lane at Linden Airport in New Jersey. That day, Jaguars took four of the top six positions.

On Sunday, Toyotas took three of the top 10 positions, as Tony Stewart -- Busch's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate -- finished second, and Brian Vickers brought home a season-high ninth-place finish for Red Bull Racing.

"This is a date that will forever go down in the history of Toyota Motorsports. And we look at it, certainly, as one of many to come," said Jim Aust, president and CEO of Toyota Racing Development. "It's obviously a historic day for Toyota to get the first Sprint Cup win of our short career. Certainly, we were looking at that possibility last year. But it was a learning year."

Indeed it was.

The manufacturer struggled heavily in 2007, its inaugural year in the Cup Series.

Michael Waltrip Racing was discovered to have a fuel additive in the intake manifold of Waltrip's Camry during qualifying for last year's Daytona 500 and withstood a series of penalties, fines and suspensions. It set the tone for the rest of the season that featured a weekly list of DNQs that anchored the year, headlined by Waltrip. Of the six drivers who raced Toyotas full time last year, they attempted 193 races and missed 84 of them -- Waltrip missed 22 races, and A.J. Allmendinger missed 19.

When Toyota drivers did make races, they struggled often. A third-place finish by Dave Blaney at Talladega Superspeedway last October, and Brian Vickers' fifth-place finish in the spring at Lowe's were the only two top-five finishes.

This year's been different already.

Since Joe Gibbs Racing announced last September it was switching from Chevrolet to Toyota, the entire outlook of the manufacturer has changed.

"For us, you know, when we started out the year, there were so many changes, so many things, so many firsts," said owner Joe Gibbs of his team's signing of Busch, landing Mars as a primary sponsor and switching to Toyota. "We started the year, there was a huge amount of change -- everything we had to go through. So we really appreciate the way everybody worked and hunkered up."

To many, landing the Gibbs team on its side gave the manufacturer immediate credibility in the garage by aligning with a proven winner. That credibility materialized once cars hit the track.

Stewart finished second in the Budweiser Shootout exhibition race in February, where three Toyota drivers were in the top 10. Michael Waltrip qualified his Toyota second for the Daytona 500. And Denny Hamlin won the second Gatorade Duel qualifying race.

Stewart and Busch finished third and fourth, respectively, in the Daytona 500, a race that saw Stewart lead 16 laps and in the lead with three laps remaining. Busch had the dominant machine that day, leading 86 laps and trailing Stewart during the final restart. Since then, Busch has led 329 laps, the most in the Sprint Cup Series, and has been the only driver in the series to lead every race.

"When you take a look at what Joe Gibbs Racing has in their trio of drivers, any one of those guys is capable of winning three or four races a year," Aust said. "So you add those numbers up by themselves, and my forecast was eight or nine wins for the year. And I'd like for that to come true by the end of the season."

It's a bold prediction for the manufacturer that just a season ago was struggling to both garner acceptance from an American-entrenched fan base, but also was battling fiercely to put its cars in the show to prove it belonged.

But for Aust, he's allowed to make those statements; he's retiring this summer from the manufacturer's leadership post he's held for a decade. So when Gibbs was passing out his congratulatory embraces, Aust was the final one.

"This is a fabulous retirement present," he said. "It's one I was hopeful we would get before my time was up at the end of the year.

"Our expectations are that this is something that could have happened in the first race at Daytona. So it's great to see it come this quickly after. It's one of those things as everybody says, once you get the first one, the rest will come easy. We hope that comes true this year."