Toyota Marches Through NASCAR
Toyota, having captured its first manufacturers championship Friday evening at TMS, didn’t rest on its laurels. It was also announced by Michael Waltrip Racing (MWR) the team would be the first to field a Toyota Camry in the Busch Series for the 2007 season. Two other teams are expected to make the change also.
MWR will field one NASCAR Busch Series entry - the No. 99 Aaron’s Dream Machine - with driver David Reutimann as driver.
“Our ability to partner with Toyota in the Busch Series will take our team to a championship level,” Waltrip said. “When Toyota entered the Craftsman Truck Series, everybody realized it was just a matter of time before they were in the Busch Series and NEXTEL Cup Series.”
“We’ve competed and won with our Aaron’s Dream Machine team,” continued Waltrip. “Before Toyota, we really didn’t have any wind tunnel or engineering support. We’ve got all those things now. We’ve been running well without and we’re going to run even better with it. We’ve got Reutimann behind the wheel and I think we’ll have a good year.”
“Everyone at Aaron’s is really looking forward to the new 2007 Aaron’s Dream Machine Toyota Camry,” stated Ken Butler, President of Aaron’s Sales and Lease Ownership. “Michael Waltrip has been a mainstay of Aaron’s marketing program over the past few years, and we fully support what he and Toyota are putting together. With David Reutimann as our new driver and Toyota as the new manufacturer, the combination has the potential to put the Dream Machine back out in the front.”
This season, Toyota has already collected 11 wins in NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series competition, and the manufacturer has scored 24 wins since entering the Series in 2004.
Where will it all stop?
This week also brought the announcement the Toyota Camry has been approved for competition in the ARCA RE/MAX Series for 2007.
In six short years Toyota has moved from the Goody
CAMS missed a great opportunity a few seasons back, just before the re introduction of the V8’s. Toyota Australia & Mitsubitshi (both of whom manufacture domestically) said that they would be happy to enter if a V6 were adopted. This would have fitted in perfectly with the very popular Camray & Magna, both of which are top sellers in their class. Alas, CAMS - leaned on by Ford & GM - said no way, it’s a V8 or nothing. Our loss IMHO, but the V8 faithful would disagree.