MOTORSPORT: Toyota's NASCAR nightmare

Friday motorsport reportFebruary 16, 2007

>> Cheating scandal blow for Toyota
Toyota has had a nightmare start to its debut in NASCAR's premier division. The Japanese giant, making its foray into the Nextel Cup against American makes Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge, has seen its prize entry, that of Michael Waltrip (pictured), pinged for a rules infringment in the lead-up to the Daytona 500.

NASCAR has responded by imposing the stiffest penalities in its history.

Waltrip is a two-time Daytona 500 winner and had qualified 24th -- the third Toyota in the field, behind Jeremy Mayfield in 15th and Mike Skinner 17th.

Toyota's entry into American stock car racing has run into a lot of resistance and this controversy has stunned Toyota bosses.

Although it is a team rather than a manufacturer fault, it is a massive embarrassment to the company aiming to be the world's biggest carmaker, which a decade ago was suspended from world rallying for a year for a serious turbocharger irregularity and which has spent billions in Formula 1 with next to nothing to show for it in the way of results.

An American Toyota executive, Jim Aust, says of the NASCAR incident: "This is a week we'd looked forward to for many years. For it to begin this way is an extreme disappointment. It's certainly taken away from the happiness we'd looked forward to."

Officials found an unidentified, silicone-like substance under the manifold of Waltrip's No. 55 Toyota Camry. They confiscated the part and an hour later impounded the whole car when a replacement manifold also was suspicious.

Waltrip's crew chief David Hyder and his director of competition Bobby Kennedy were ejected from Daytona International Speedway and suspended from the sport indefinitely.

NASCAR vice-president of competition Robin Pemberton says "indefinite" means very long. Hyder has also been fined a record US$100,000.

Even before the season starts Waltrip has been docked 100 championship points, as has his wife, Buffy, the team's "official" owner -- although in title only.

To get a start in the Monday morning Australian time Daytona 500 Waltrip now has to take part in a 150-mile (240km) qualifying race and be the highest or second highest finisher among drivers who weren't in the top 35 in last year's owner points.

Pemberton says scrutineers detected an unfamiliar substance while checking around the manifold, carburetor and restrictor plate on Waltrip's Camry.

The substance reappeared when the crew changed manifolds and carburetors and presented the car back for scrutineering.

Waltrip was allowed to qualify while officials tried to establish what they had found.

"It was a foreign substance that shouldn't have been in the engine," Pemberton says.

"It was completely different from oil (which Waltrip claimed it was).

"It wasn't anything we've seen before and it wasn't anything that could have gotten in there accidentally. We're still trying to figure out what it was.

"I'm really surprised because you just don't mess with tyres and restrictor plates and fuel here.

"This is a case of gas being mixed with an oxygenate to help horsepower. This whole thing is all about the fuel. The additive was in the fuel line and the fuel system, not just the intake.

"Teams are using every part of the grey area they can, but this team went across the line trying to get in the Daytona 500."

Pemberton stressed that it was a team matter and that Toyota was not implicated.

Waltrip and Toyota's woes have overshadowed other cheating incidents at Daytona. These include fines and points penalties on three crew chiefs in the Dodge stable of race-winning team owner Ray Evernham, the man who has been trying to entice retired F1 seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher to test one of his cars after his criticisms of NASCAR.

Ambrose was sixth in the final practice session, and the fastest rookie, in his Ford Fusion after being 29th the previous day. His teammate, Jon Wood, has been either fastest or second fastest on both days, with Ford Fusions filling eight of the top 10 spots in final practice.

"I am feeling really good about the race," Ambrose says. "The car is working very well in the draft when we are running in the pack and we even managed to miss a couple of accidents out there.

"Qualifying is not the focus for this first race, but the race package is important -- and that's been going very well."

"If they go half as good as they look (with a new day-glo red base color and greater use of black) Holden fans are in for a terrific season," Skaife says.

HRT also confirmed that Ford veteran Glenn Seton will partner Skaife in the endurance races at Sandown and Bathurst -- a story broken in Motorsport News magazine almost 10 days ago and reported here at the time.

A Bathurst victory is the big thing missing from Seton's biography, despite trying for two decades. But the 41-year-old winner of touring car championships in 1993 and '97 has finished on the podium at Bathurst three of the past four years, with two seconds and a third.

"I'm really looking forward to being a part of Team Red," Seton says. "It is a great opportunity for me to potentially be a part of a winning team at Bathurst, which has always been my dream and a goal.

"I haven't lost the passion -- it still burns within me. My career wouldn't be complete without a Bathurst win and driving for HRT gives me the potential to live my dream. I'm not ready to retire and I'm looking at this as the next stepping stone in my career."

Skaife says: "Glenn and I have been mates since we were kids, and we were teammates early on in our careers at Gibson Motorsport.

"When the V8 era began, I was lucky enough to join Holden while Glenn was on 'the dark side'.

"Since he stopped driving fulltime, I've been trying to entice him over for a couple of years and now I'm rapt that he's finally accepted and he'll be able to drive a good car at last!"

Seton says he can't recall ever having driven a Commodore -- not even a rent-a-car!

The city's major, Tony Mooney, prominent car dealer and chairman of the city's steering committee for the proposal, Tony Ireland, and V8 Supercar chief Tony Cochrane are to meet Queensland sports minister Andrew Fraser in Brisbane next week.

The state government's attitude has been that it would want either a business consortium or the federal government to tip in $10 million towards the cost.

The Queensland government rejected the concept in early December as too costly, saying it was told the event -- proposed from 2008 -- would require a one-off capital injection of about $11m but finding that the initial capital works would be $24.7m and that the government and the city council would then have to contribute $3m a year each.

Christie's had estimated the car, supposedly that which Hermann Mueller piloted to victory in the 1939 French Grand Prix, was going to fetch as much as a record US$15m.

Auto Union was a forerunner of Audi and, along with its German competitor Mercedes-Benz dominated the GP circuits in the early days.

Bloomberg financial wire service quoted Simon Kidston, a Geneva consultant to collectors of high-priced cars, saying: "It's strange that such a high-value car be withdrawn a few days before the auction after all the time and effort devoted to marketing. It's unheard of. You don't market the car for six months and then say you have to research it.''

Before the postponement Kidston had said: "It's one of the ultimate cars of all time. It's rare; it sounds wonderful; it looks like nothing else, and it's got that aurora of intimidation.''

Coulthard's performance has been interpreted in Australia as a good sign for his Aussie teammate, Mark Webber, after the previous tardiness of the RB3.

Heaven knows, Webber needed to see some encouragement from this keenly-awaited Renault-powered, Adrian Newey-designed car -- and let's hope it is an indication that the team has found something.

However, it must be pointed out that the word from Barcelona is that Coulthard was running on very low fuel, new tyres, taking liberties with the kerbs -- and that the whole exercise may have been to impress Dietrich Mateschitz, the Austrian tycoon who runs the Red Bull energy drink empire.

Coulthard was not only quick but chalked up 116 laps of the Barcelona track for the day, although his time was still 0.674sec slower than the best of the week by Felipe Massa in a Ferrari.

The McLarens of dual world champion Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton have also been impressive throughout pre-season testing, with rookie Hamilton doing even more laps on Wednesday than Coulthard.

Webber had a drivetrain problem on the last day in Barcelona that restricted him to 62 laps and 11th on the timesheet.

We can only recall one day this year that Webber's RB3 has been in the top 10 -- and, from memory, that was a day when there were fewer cars running than normal.

Most teams are now ferrying cars to Bahrain for tests from February 22-24 and February 27 to March 1, but Spyker and Williams will stay in Spain to run at Valencia and again at Barcelona.

Red Bull's head of race and test engineering Paul Monaghan says he was more pleased with Coulthard's mileage than speed in Barcelona as the team tries to find reliability in the RB3 after its early problems.

"We are very pleased with the way this three-day test has gone," Monaghan says. "It's nice to see David is quickest, at least for the day, but more impressive is the distance he completed.

"We can be happy with the mileage we have completed over the three days and also with the fact that our relationship with Renault and Bridgestone continues to improve, as has the overall performance and reliability of the car.

"Now we look forward to more work on both these parameters when we head off for hotter conditions at the Bahrain test."

>> Schumi can't stay away
Obviously undeterred by Mark Webber's recent criticism of his shadow still looming over Ferrari, Michael Schumacher turned up at Barcelona on Wednesday to observe testing. The scuderia and Schumacher are playing down talk that he will end up running the team.

>> Kimi may struggle, says Prost
Kimi Raikkonen "could have difficulties integrating into the new team at Ferrari", says Alain Prost, a four-time F1 world champion who had troubles himself at the Italian team some years back.

Ferrari has lost some key people, including technical director Ross Brawn -- perhaps for only one year.

Prost predicts that Fernando Alonso will be "very strong" with his new team, McLaren.

Prost's credibility unfortunately took a battering when he turned to F1 team ownership, with his outfit ingloriously collapsing, but we agree with his assessments of what's in store for the sport's top two talents this year.

"You just need to have the space to install the lighting system," German Tilke has told Autosport.

"You also need a certain amount of brightness to allow TV cameras to show the cars property -- not as blurry streaks!

"But there have been tremendous developments in lighting and camera technology, so I don't see it being a problem."

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has hinted at night races in either Japan or China and perhaps Singapore, as early as towards the end of next year.

After the hundreds of millions of dollars splurged on new F1 tracks in recent years, Tilke says some major mistakes have been made with grandiose facilities built in remote locations.

Of Shanghai's US$350m circuit Tilke says: "We did create quite vast spaces between the pits and the team buildings.

"It gets annoying because you have to walk all the time.

"But it's even more annoying because it takes away atmosphere.

"We have learned from that -- we'll organise it better."

That's not much consolation to those who have spent the big money.

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