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Jimmy Makar knows all about switching manufacturers.
In 2008, Makar, the Senior Vice President of Racing Operations at Joe Gibbs Racing, helped guide the organization during its transition from Chevrolet to Toyota.
With Furniture Row Racing making the change from Chevrolet to Toyota for the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, a move that includes a technical alliance with JGR, Makar has a keen understanding of what lies ahead for the Denver, Colorado-based team.
"I hate to say it's easier," Makar, crew chief at JGR for more than a decade, said, "but it is easier than it used to be."
The biggest issue for Makar and his group when JGR made the move involved the engine department, which at that time built and maintained engines for its Sprint Cup and XFINITY Series programs.
While the organization continued to build its own engines through 2011, swapping from building the Chevrolet R-07 to the Toyota engine was time-consuming and costly. In 2012, JGR teams began using engines built by Toyota Racing Development, an arrangement that continues today.
There will be no such problem for Furniture Row since the team doesn't build its own engines. Previously, Earnhardt Childress Racing supplied the horsepower; now it will come from TRD.
"The engine program is a huge undertaking if you have to change that," Makar said. "The bodies aren't nearly as big of a deal anymore, especially now with the way the rules are. You have to install different sheet metal but it's basically the same, so that's not as bad of a deal.
"They've got their work cut out for them to do all that work, certainly. But the partnership that we’ve developed with them and what we're doing for them will help a lot, too."
Furniture Row, owned by Barney Visser, has fielded Chevrolet-branded entries since 2005 when it debuted the No. 78 in a one-race effort with driver Jerry Robertson. It began competing full time in 2008 with Joe Nemechek. The team enters '16 with 307 starts and two wins -- in '11 with Regan Smith and '15 with current driver Martin Truex Jr., who made it all the way to the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway last season.
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Changing manufacturer allegiances in NASCAR is hardly uncommon, but the reasons behind such a move can vary. Team Penske made the switch from Dodge to Ford after the 2012 season when Dodge pulled out of NASCAR; Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates went from Dodge to Chevrolet in 2009 when it began a short-lived association with Dale Earnhardt Inc. And in 2010, Richard Petty Motorsports ended its Dodge affiliation to align itself with Ford.
When JGR made the move, the automaker was in just its second season at the Sprint Cup level and struggling to get its footing. But the long-range outlook appeared promising to JGR officials, who have said they felt they had more of a voice with the new alliance.
Today Toyota teams boast 79 premier series victories -- including 70 by JGR drivers -- and Kyle Busch (JGR) enters the season as the defending series champion.
Similarly, Joe Garone, general manager for Furniture Row said his group's move to Toyota had nothing to do with the support it received from Richard Childress Racing, with whom it shared a technical alliance but was more about "Chevrolet, as far as the level of support you get to run.
"If we were going to run and be happy running in the middle of the field week in and week out, we would have been fine where we were," Garone said. "But Chevrolet has their hands full. They have plenty of teams and, as a new one coming in we were always going to be the bottom team. They can only spread themselves so thin. So, honestly, there wasn’t the opportunity for us to get to the upper tier.
"Toyota looked at it completely differently. They could see the benefits that we bring to the table as a single-car team partnered with one of their teams, and they jumped right on board."
The association with JGR, he said, was "like icing on the cake."
While there were previous conversations about JGR and the now defunct Michael Waltrip Racing working more closely together, team owner Joe Gibbs said "that never kind of came together."
"I think this one was something we all talked over and Toyota thought it would be good for them. We seemed to hit it off with Barney and myself, and we decided to share a lot of technology and stuff, so that's what we’re going to do."
In addition to chassis and technical support, JGR will also provide the bulk of the pit crew for the No. 78 team. Adam Mosher (rear tire carrier) and Brian Dheel (gas man) return from Truex's 2015 over-the-wall crew. The members will train and be based out of Gibbs shop in Huntersville, North Carolina.
"Honestly, it's about the car you take to the track and being better than the next guy's," Garone said. "We take the rock and polish it. We're really good at polishing it, but we don't necessarily build the rock. We get a Joe Gibbs chassis, we build that and we focus on that.
"As a single-car team, we put all our energy on that one car and R&D and technology, and don't have to spread ourselves over many cars. So sometimes we can move quicker than some of the other guys."