“By the way, our engines are going to have parameters that will let them make more power, even though they are based on the fact that our engine design really has not changed significantly from the deck height and the bore centers and the camshaft position and the cooling. It hasn’t changed since back in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s. The engine that Chevrolet has today, the engine that Toyota has today, the engine that Chrysler has today are all engines that have been generated from a clean sheet of paper within very broad, wide-open parameters that NASCAR has given.
“So they’re going to pull that back the same as they’re doing with the limitations in the car with the Car Of Tomorrow. They’re going to do the same thing with the engine and it’s going to result in a lot of obsolescence. But with the friends I’ve got on the other side, and the talent of Robert and Doug, I’m not at all terrified on what we’re capable of engine-wise.”
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Left to right, Jack Roush and his Cup warriors, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Jamie McMurray, and Carl Edwards.
Toyota came into other forms of racing and spent a bundle, like in Formula One, and didn’t win a race. Are you scared of what they’ll do here?
This brought a classic Roush response. “Did I say I was scared? I’m long on the feud and I don’t back away from a good fight if it’s for a good reason. Why am I so worried? If they want to come back and at the end of Greg’s [Biffle] or Matt’s [Kenseth] contract with me, and if they want to offer them twice as much money, which they’ve got the ability to do -- then I’ve got to go back and say that my business, on the very best scenario, is a 3-5% profitable business. [Wow! Not much profit margin – Ed.]
“So, if I’ve got to come back and have an influx of money coming from another direction, that causes me to operate in the red in terms of what I have to spend versus what I’m able to raise. If I have to go 20% upside-down, then I’m faced with the same scenario that I did when I came into Cup in 1988: how long can I stay and what’s my confidence it’s going to turn around? That’s in the competitive side, the technical side, or even for that matter, the human side.
”Greg or Matt or Jamie [McMurray] or Carl [Edwards] going forward are not going to want to be part of this unless I do things to support them. I know when John Reiser was alive -- and we were up to our last contract with Matt and thinking about what Robbie [Reiser, Kenseth’s crew chief] wanted to do -- the reason they made their decision as they told me was that I would get for them whatever they needed.
“Well, I may not be able to do that if the stakes raise beyond my means. If there’s some anxiety, that’s the only anxiety I’ve got. The fact that they [Toyota] have doubled what other teams have traditionally spent in Formula One; what does that mean to me in the short-term? That means it’s going to be potentially different, but the idea of having me work as hard as the guy that’s got my job in one of the ownerships of the other team -- they’re not going to outwork me on things that I recognize as important.
”The effort that we will make to keep our drivers happy and to avail ourselves with the technologies, nobody is going to make a greater effort than that. I expect to hand Toyota their head over the short-term, and then it’s just a matter of what happens in the long-term as it relates to where they spend their money and the kind of upset it makes in the way we do our business.”