Full Throttle

Lee White, the president and general manager of Toyota Racing Development, has heard the murmuring. He’s heard the muffled talk that his company is poised to jump with both boots upon the neck of a NASCAR series that is perceived to be severely wounded.

Not gonna happen. So he says.

“We’re experiencing the same downturn that everyone else is,” White said. “That’s public knowledge now. There are not millions and millions of dollars out there to sprinkle around. Frankly, if there were, we would not do that because it is against our company’s core values to be predatory and take advantage of someone else’s difficulty.

Management would not let us do something like that and take advantage of other people’s business downturns.”

Besides, it wouldn’t work. Toyota has pounded nearly a half a billion dollars into this rat hole with little to nothing to show for it.

My snark aside, White said he expects that all four carmakers will participate in the 2009 Sprint Cup series, although Dodge is tough to get a read on because Chrysler is a privately owned company.

“I think it’s just so much of a part of the culture of this country that they understand that,” White said. “They’re not about to disassociate themselves from something that is so engrained in the fabric of America. I mean all the clichés we used when we got in it, are absolutely true. It would be devastating to Toyota associates, to plant associates, to dealerships, to everybody who has jumped on the bandwagon to be associated with NASCAR, I don’t think they want to go back to where we were.”