MOTORSPORTS
Toyota, Joe Gibbs Racing
Team UpTORRANCE, CA (Sept. 5, 2007) - Toyota Motor Sales USA and Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) announced today that the three-time championship-winning race team will campaign Toyota Camrys for drivers Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch in the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
JGR's NASCAR Busch Grand National Series program will also utilize Toyota Camrys next season. JGR will be joining Bill Davis Racing, Michael Waltrip Racing and Team Red Bull as the teams that will be racing Camrys when the 2008 season kicks off next February at Daytona International
Speedway.
Rising
ExpectationsToyota
Racing Development is subsidiary of Toyota Motor Sales, and is
based in Costa Mesa, CA and Mooresville, NC. TRD serves as the
North American racing arm for design, development and assembly of
Toyota's factory racing engines. In addition, TRD is also the
source of high-performance aftermarket products for both street
performance and grass-roots racing Toyotas."Joe Gibbs Racing is one of the most respected teams in NASCAR, a championship-caliber race team and a first-class organization," said Jim Aust, president and CEO of Toyota Racing Development (TRD). "We are confident that partnering with the Gibbs team will raise the level of our entire Toyota NASCAR program, and will be beneficial to all of the current teams racing the Toyota
Camry. "I think if anybody would have said at the beginning of the season that Toyota would have been sitting at a press conference on Sept. 5 announcing that Joe Gibbs Racing was going to be part of our overall team effort for next year, I think we all would have had a hardy laugh at that," Aust
added. The addition of Joe Gibbs Racing to Toyota's NASCAR fold adds luster to a legacy 25 years in the making, ranging across Formula 1 Champ Car, IRL, sports car, and off-road stadium and desert truck racing before entering NASCAR's Craftsman Truck, Busch and Nextel Sprint series. "Our motorsports heritage has taught us the value of working with experienced teams and partners," Aust said. "We have built excellent relationships with the current teams, as we have developed the Toyota Camry Cup program during our first year of NASCAR competition, and we look forward to developing a similar relationship with Joe Gibbs
Racing."
"We want to be the team to beat. They want to be the manufacturer to beat. That's a combination that works for us, for them, and our
sponsors."- J.D. Gibbs, Joe
Gibbs Racing President "Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota want to be competitive now and for generations to come," said J.D. Gibbs, president of JGR. "When you really look at the landscape of our sport, it's really changed a lot over the last few years. I think you see all the mergers and acquisitions and partnerships, and I think what that says is how difficult it is to run a business in this sport in this day and
age." Basically, Gibbs said, the decision for the move to Toyota came down to staying with GM and battling for resources with other major teams, such Hendrick Motorsports, Richard Childress Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc., or switching to Toyota and being the major player there. JGR concluded it could be the leader in the Toyota field, garnering all the support and resources commensurate with the
move. JGR will continue to build engines for its own cars at its facility under the watchful supervision of Mark Cronquist, head of the JGR Engine Department. In addition, the technological expertise and assistance of TRD's 200+ engineers, engine builders and support staff will provide support from an organization that, like JGR, is bent on winning
championships. "This was a long, hard, difficult process," Gibbs added. "It wasn't an easy decision. But we think it's the right decision. We have the same mindset in terms of performance and technology. We want to be the team to beat. They want to be the manufacturer to beat. That's a combination that works for us, for them, and our
sponsors."
(Source: Toyota) 
