Surging Toyota should view 2016 as warning
One year ago, Toyota Racing Development’s armada of Joe Gibbs Racing and Furniture Row Racing was in the process of eclipsing the entire Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.
As the mythology went, somehow JGR’s four drivers — thendefending series champion Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth — and Martin Truex Jr. at affiliate FRR would all wedge into the final four championship spots at Homestead-Miami Speedway and contest a finale that rightly seemed the province of the most dominant manufacturer of the season.
Or maybe should was the appropriate word.
It was impossible math but a nod to just how oppressive the Toyotas had been to that point. Then Truex won at Darlington Raceway and Hamlin at Richmond Raceway to give the manufacturer wins in half of the 26 regular-season races.
Toyota, particularly JGR, began woefully slowly in comparison this season, allowing potentially troublesome new rivals to emerge in the process, but Toyota’s fleet might be at least as well off right now as it was a year ago.
Toyotas have won seven times this season entering the final two races of the regular season but have claimed five of the last seven and three of the last four.
Truex is charging to the regular-season championship with a passel of playoff points that would seemingly assure him — as much as any truism is possible in the first use of this tweaked system — of an express trip to the Homestead final. He has never been in question this season, but that he had all three of Toyota’s wins through the first 18 races was puzzling.
Busch, after being bedeviled out of numerous possible wins by myriad factors, some beyond his team’s doing, got his first July 30 at Pocono Raceway and reached victory lane again Saturday to complete a sweep of the Camping World Truck, Xfinity and Cup slate at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Hamlin won for the first time July 16 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to qualify for the playoffs.
Although his three-point lead on Ganassi Racing ’s Jamie McMurray for the final points transfer ticket is ultra-tenuous, Kenseth is a master of race accounting. He captured the 2003 championship with one win, albeit in a drastically different preplayoffs system, and has four of his seven top-five finishes this season in his last six races.
And Erik Jones, Truex’s rookie teammate, hints at being a next first-time winner and playoff qualifier after finishing third Aug. 13 at Michigan International Speedway and second — leading 260 of 500 laps — at Bristol. That would make for a particularly cruel cut for Kenseth, who could be edited from the postseason a few months before Jones, 21, takes his job at JGR in the No. 20 Toyota.
But for the manufacturer, not losing a company car in the trade and injecting a coveted young driver into the fray this early would be good business.
So after the first half of the season was filled with speculation over how much a new body design was tempering the Toyota contingent, how much the unexpected retirement of Edwards and the insertion of rookie Daniel Suarez was changing the dynamic and most certainly the tabulation of wins, all seems well.
Of course, it seemed very well last year, too, especially after Truex won two of the first three playoff races. But Edwards accounted for the only other postseason victory the company managed, and he and Busch represented the manufacturer in the four-driver championship. Hey, half ’s not bad.
Then, Chevrolet-driving Jimmie Johnson won his seventh championship with Busch third in the final standings, five points out, and Edwards fourth after being wrecked out of second position by title-eligible Joey Logano with 10 laps left.
Edwards’ outcome perhaps perfectly illustrated Toyota’s situation then and now: out front with another great chance, but with miles ahead.