 The Roush Racing fleet ready to meet the rising tide of Toyotas. |
“Part of the reason we’re discussing doing that is to be able to feel like we can stand the pressure of having a round of negotiations with sponsors that may not be rich enough to cover everything that we’re spending, or may be ahead of where we are to negotiate with our drivers in the face of offers that they’d have to do other things. [Like leave to drive for a Toyota team. Can you say Dale Jarrett? – Ed.]
“I’m definitely preparing myself for a siege and I expect that traditional conventions – where you look at the Wood Brothers and Bud Moore and the Pettys and all these other folks that have made their name in this business down through the decades. They’ve done so based on what the dollar income from the sponsorships and from the prize money would justify. I don’t expect that’s going to be the case with Toyota. I think that they’ll carry their money and carry their technology and try to put the rest of us in a catch-up scenario, and I’m trying to be ready for that.”
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The go-to-war partner General Jack is talking with is the same group that handles the Boston Red Sox. [An announcement confirming a 50% ownership of Roush racing by this group is expected during Daytona Speedweeks. – Ed.] The ‘Red Sox Nation’ of loyal fans use a lottery to buy tickets that range in price from $12--$90 for the season’s 81 (or so) sold out games. But General Jack isn’t the only team owner looking for extra income to money-up against Toyota. Ray Evernham also talked about his team getting a deep-pocketed Sugar Daddy. He’s trying to expand to four full-time Cup teams, and the sort of cash a partner could bring may be required these days to do so.
Which all brings up a baffling point that we’ll have to look into. How can a multi-car team bringing in a reported $20,000,000 per car from their sponsors/corporate partners – need serious financial help to compete?
Cup racer Brian Vickers (L) and newcomer from the open wheel ranks, A.J. Allmendinger (R), are part of a two-car Camry team headed by Toyota Racing Development – the foe. Are you concerned with the horsepower of your engines vs. Toyota’s? Roush is no lightweight at building engines himself – look all the way back to his winning drag racing days -- and he has already planned for the engine power battle. “We’ve got a great relationship with Robert and Doug Yates with putting our engines together. The reason we did that was anticipating the problem of the challenge that Toyota would bring, or Honda would bring, or who ever the next manufacturer would be to come in and try to buy their way into the sport -- either with technology or with money that they’ve made elsewhere. |
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“The horsepower business – the engine Toyota had initially in Trucks, they can’t take Cup racing -- it’s a diminished engine as they do that. And on the heels of the Car of Tomorrow, everybody is going to change their engine again. We’ve got an engine change that will occur in the next 24 months. It will make obsolete all of our engines.