Toyota boss understands but doesn't condone JGR actions
Toyota's top racing official says the manufacturer doesn't condone the actions by Joe Gibbs Racing employees who tried to manipulate NASCAR's horsepower test of Nationwide Series engines following Saturday's race at Michigan International Speedway.
Joe Gibbs Racing officials have said that no Toyota engineers were involved in the incident. The team is bracing for major penalties Tuesday after NASCAR discovered its employees rigged the throttle with magnets and spacers to keep it from producing maximum horsepower.
“I was pretty surprised to see what was happening and astonished and frankly incredulous,” Toyota Racing Development President Lee White said about the situation Sunday. “I couldn’t believe it was happening because it’s clearly defined in the entry forms that you don’t do this sort of thing.
“But I’m sure that [team owner] Joe and J.D. [Gibbs, team president] will take care of that internally, and whatever fans think they’re going to think, and we’re going to just keep working on our stuff.”
NASCAR had impounded engines after Nationwide races at Milwaukee and Chicagoland in the last two months to determine if the Toyota engine had a horsepower advantage. It implemented a rule in late July prior to the race in Indianapolis that forced the Toyotas to use a spacer that had smaller holes and allowed less air through the carburetor, cutting about 15 horsepower from those engines.
JGR had won 13 races up to that point and has won 14 of 25 events this year.
White said Toyota and its teams have been working to get that horsepower back. He said he could understand that JGR employees did not want the numbers to show how much they had gained when NASCAR took 10 cars to a chassis dynamometer, a typical occurrence after Michigan events in August.
“This sort of thing [in manipulating horsepower] is prevalent in the garage,” White said. “It’s not unknown. We had one of our truck [series] drivers ask us a couple of years ago, ‘Why aren’t you doing this because we always did it with our previous manufacturer?’
“I can understand because of the personal way a team would take the penalty that was without question directed toward them [at JGR], not the brand. They were penalized before Indy for overachievement.”
But while he understood it, he wouldn’t agree with the actions.
“It doesn’t condone it,” White said. “We don’t condone it. It’s not allowed in the rules.”
White said JGR remains in good standing with Toyota, and he was happy that J.D. Gibbs frankly addressed the issue Sunday at Michigan.
“We have seen instances throughout the last couple of years where teams were found to be doing things in postrace inspection which were obvious attempts to affect the performance of the car during the race,” White said. “To me, that is a blatant attempt to affect the outcome of the event. This was not an attempt to affect the outcome of the event.
“This was an attempt to somehow keep to themselves – in my opinion without even knowing what was actually done. It appears to be an attempt to keep their hands around some product of their effort and their hard work. And it wasn’t the right thing to do.”
It was clear that the entire horsepower issue and midseason rule change still rankled White.
“The basic change wasn’t warranted in the first place,” White said. “I was present when the restrictor was created between NASCAR and the manufacturers for the truck and the Nationwide series. The restrictor cuts the horsepower by 150 horsepower from the potential of the engines and 1,000 RPM. That limits the peak power for the Nationwide and the truck series.
“It isn’t a matter of engine design. It isn’t a matter of engine configuration. It’s a matter of who works on their product the hardest to optimize friction, combustion efficiency and fuel distribution. Those are really the only three areas you have to work on. I can even make the argument that since friction is such a big part of that, that having the tightest bore center and the Ford having the shortest and lightest crankshaft, it has the biggest advantage in Nationwide and trucks.”
