There appears to be room for improvement between Toyota teams
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Clint Bowyer disagreed with Kyle Busch‘s style of delivery, but when Busch said the Toyota teams of Michael Waltrip Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing were “idiots” for not working as closely together as other alliances, Bowyer couldn’t deny the importance of that type of collaboration in today’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing.
The success of teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Stewart-Haas Racing working together has provided a strong example to follow, with drivers from each of those four-car super teams claiming the past two championships and three of the past four. And like it or not, that could be putting more pressure on others to follow suit.
“I wish we could go back to no simulation, no testing, show up with a group of guys and get the most out of a weekend,” Bowyer said Tuesday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom. “Unfortunately, those days are over. … The success, I’m afraid from here on out, is going to be in numbers.”
Those numbers grew when Joe Gibbs Racing expanded to four Cup cars for the 2015 season, adding veteran driver Carl Edwards to a team of Busch, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth. Between JGR’s four Toyotas and Michael Waltrip Racing‘s two full-time cars, the teams appear to be better positioned to work together. But that’s not what’s happening, according to Busch.
”I’m very vocal about it because I feel like we’re idiots by not continuing to work in the right direction in order to put our companies together and do the right things for Toyota and for all of us collectively,” Busch said Monday. “Nothing has happened where Joe Gibbs Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing are going to collectively work together as in-depthly as Stewart-Haas Racing and Hendrick Motorsports are.”
Bowyer admitted HMS and SHR are setting the benchmark for team alliances, because, as he says, you’re racing against eight cars and their collective information when you take on those teams on a weekly basis. So what is it that MWR and JGR can do better?
“No doubt, more data points would be potentially more helpful,” MWR co-owner Rob Kauffman said. “That’s something that if we can work with our fellow Toyota teams to collaborate in that regard, we’d certainly like to do that. It’s really a three-legged stool between MWR, JGR and Toyota TRD as they call themselves. That’s kind of how we’re organized amongst ourselves as we look at all of those three points and what can you do to raise the level of those three together.”
Michael Waltrip agreed with Kauffman that more could be done between the two teams.
“Could we collaborate on more? Yes, and I think that’s ultimately the goal,” Waltrip said. “I think everyone sees the success that organizations have by working together.”
But Waltrip pointed out that the super-team approach isn’t the only way to reach success in Sprint Cup.
“Well, then you look at Roger’s (Penske) two cars and they do pretty good and there’s only two of them,” Waltrip said. “We feel like that there’s going to be some advantages by collaborating with Gibbs more and we continue to work toward that.”
Of course Bowyer, in his own tongue-in-cheek way, had a suggestion for better cooperation between the teams.
“If we could get Kyle to work better with us, I think it would be beneficial for sure,” Bowyer said with a laugh.