The worst-kept secret in NASCAR was finally broken in late January 2006 with the confirmation that Toyota will field entries in NASCAR's Winston (aka Nextel) Cup and Busch Series racing divisions. "It's going to be an important point in our history," said NASCAR's Brian France, who further noted that Toyota will come in to win races immediately (as though anyone ever expected otherwise) and will "market the sport; you'll see commercials and promotions."
But how much more promotion does the sport really need? If anything, the sport needs LESS promotion and more of an effort at improving the product it fields. Commercials and promotion isn't high on NASCAR's necessities list.
Toyota has long scared other NASCAR manufacturers because of its enormous edge in resources - "Toyota has plenty of cash and American rivals Ford and GM don't," as one motorsports scribe puts it.
The most outspoken about the issue so far has been Jack Roush - "We have to keep American manufacturers involved; we can't make it a Japanese-owned manufacturers series.....We have to.....not let Toyota have things that will obsolete everything else. If NASCAR has a way to stop that, that's wonderful. But if NASCAR manages to get in front of Toyota and enforce it, they'll be the first sanctioning body that ever did that." Roush further adds that Ford, GM, and Dodge may cut back their NASCAR efforts or quit altogether, even though "racing is not a luxury."
Toyota first entered the Craftsman Truck Series in 2004, and in 2005 it won some 40% of the Truck Series' races. While Toyota has been stepping up, the other brands have not - Dodge has cut back to basically Bobby Hamilton's outfit while Ford and Chevy programs have not grown at all since Toyota entered. It is in keeping with Toyota's reputation for pricing other brands out of contention. It seems to make nonsense of Brian France's blithe assertion that Toyota "has learned out culture and how we do business. They know they have to play on a level playing field, and they're very comfortable with that."
Even less sanguine than Roush is fellow Ford man Doug Yates, front man for Roush's engine alliance with Robert Yates - "(Toyota) can put the series out of business like they've done in the past (in other forms of racing).....they spend to buy all the best players, then how is NASCAR going to control the racing?"
It is somewhat reminiscent of when NASCAR allowed Hoosier Race Tire to field tires in Winston Cup in 1988 amid the attempted takeover of Goodyear by the anti-racing businessman Sir James Goldsmith - NASCAR wanted to cover itself in case Goodyear quit. But Toyota is no small company, it is the company that ruined a lot of racing around the world.
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Amid Toyota's announcements, opposition to NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow continues to harden. The tone of comments from Ray Evernham, Felix Sabates, and Jack Roush strongly suggests it was an unaccounced boycott by raceteams to NASCAR's Daytona test of the COT, and one has to wonder whether it will get worse - and leaves one wondering if the COT will, despite NASCAR announcements, ever see a competitive lap in anger.
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