Toyota NASCAR fortunes could improve in 2008

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Jimmie Johnson, atop the Daytona 500 testing board again, is taking aim at a third straight Cup championship, and if the first week of the new season is any indication, teammate Jeff Gordon may again be his toughest rival.Or -- don't laugh -- will it be a Toyota?Most crew chiefs and drivers cautioned not to read too much into testing speeds for next month's season-opener, because handling in the draft, tire wear, and engine-air intake setups with these new cars would be much more important in the 500 itself.Nevertheless some trends appear clear: Johnson and Gordon, and perhaps teammate Casey Mears (runner-up here to Johnson in 2006), are fast. And Toyotas are fast as well, led by Jacques Villeneuve.For Toyota teams, a change in fortunes can't come soon enough, after a miserable 2007.The day's biggest NASCAR headlines may actually have been made in Washington, where Joe Gibbs announced he is stepping down as coach of the Redskins, which would give him more time with his NASCAR teams. That may be good news for Toyota, because Gibbs' three drivers, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, are all championship material but also a bit volatile.In fact, Toyota teams here are making quite an impression, with nine of the 15-fastest cars in Tuesday's single-car runs.Johnson's 184.763 mph solo run was just a tick quicker than Villeneuve's. Villeneuve, the 1997 Formula One champion, qualified sixth at Talladega last fall, and so far he has upstaged fellow F1 racer Juan Pablo Montoya here.If 2007 was all but a disaster for Toyota, the company's second season on the Cup tour could be much better, with the addition of the Gibbs' threesome.Toyota's Lee White is certainly optimistic. White, the company's field boss says that Toyota's engines are now strong enough to win, as last fall's NASCAR chassis dyno tests showed: "I saw the chassis dyno numbers from NASCAR after Texas, and our numbers then were right on the mark, and they're better now."Don't forget these aren't Daytona 'plate' motors any more. The old traditional plate motor is history. This engine was first raced at Talladega last fall, an open-spec engine, just like something you would race at Michigan."Six months before Talladega we saw that as an opportunity, and we had 15 people working just on that engine. And we were on the pole at Talladega, and we had six of the top eight qualifiers. And four of our guys all ran in the top 10 all day, and if they'd gotten in the right line any one of them could have won that race."So I'm optimistic we can compete for the Daytona 500 pole, and to win one, if not both of the 150s (qualifying races), and have a couple of guys contending to win the 500."White said that the addition of the Gibbs operation "has completely changed the outlook and focus for us as a company.The most obvious new Toyota engineering project is putting Gibbs' Ronnie Crooks, one of the sport's top chassis specialists, in charge of helping the three other Toyota operations, something rather unusual. Crooks has been all over the garage this week."That was J. D. Gibbs' idea," White said. "I give J. D. (Joe's son) all the credit. Something like that is unusual at the Cup level ... and I would have to say we were rather unsuccessful in getting our teams to share in projects. So the Gibbs guys are leading by example."White said that Toyota has four engineers in Gibbs' engine shop right now, working with engine boss Mark Cronquist "to get them over the hump."We are supplementing their parts' acquisition, so they can spend more time actually developing the engine. Hopefully, Michael Waltrip Racing and Red Bull will be running engines assembled from the same components as Mark's."The task is to add our 220-plus engineering staff to theirs, so we can not only raise our game but raise their game. I'll let you know how that works out by July."The Hendrick guys set the bar pretty high last year. I can't wait until next week here to see how Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. runs in the Hendrick stuff."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)