It wasn’t that long ago, David Wilson can now admit, that maybe he wasn’t as critical or 100 percent honest with himself about Toyota’s performance level in the NASCAR Cup Series. After Martin Truex Jr. won at Darlington Raceway on May 9, Wilson was thinking, we’re OK.
The president of Toyota Racing Development now sees that isn’t the case.
“We are clearly in chase mode,” Wilson (pictured with Denny Hamlin, above) told RACER. “While I will always prefer to be out front, and be looking in the proverbial rearview mirror, sometimes it’s easier being in chase mode because you know where the target is.”
Like the rest of the Cup Series garage, Wilson acknowledges Hendrick Motorsports — specifically Kyle Larson’s No. 5 team — is the target. Since Truex’s win at Darlington, it’s been all about Hendrick. The organization is on a five-race winning streak, with the last three victories coming from Larson.
During that stretch, Hendrick drivers swept the top four spots at Dover and then finished 1-2 at COTA, Charlotte, and Sonoma. In the last five weeks, the five Toyota drivers have combined to lead 54 laps.
“Those that know our culture and how we operate, our intensity level is a 10 out of 10,” Wilson said. “The competition meetings the past couple of weeks have not been fun, and the frustration across the board mounts every week. All you have to do is tune in to that 18 car (Kyle Busch), and he’ll give you a running commentary any given Sunday, and we wouldn’t expect anything less because we expect more of ourselves.
“We’re pissed off at where we are, and we certainly don’t accept it. It’s not what we accept of ourselves.”
It’s been a baffling year for Wilson’s troops. The Toyota group felt they’d come out of the gates strong and firing on all cylinders, with Denny Hamlin’s consistency building an impressive point lead and early wins by Christopher Bell on the Daytona road course and Truex at Phoenix. Toyota led the way with five wins in the first 12 races, with their drivers leading all the laps.
“(We were) kind of feeling like, ‘OK, we’re getting a groove on, this feels right,’” Wilson said. “It felt like we upped our game from 2020, which was not a great year. It was an OK year. Then what seemed like overnight, but it never is, the wheels have fallen off the past five weeks, and of course, we know who’s been running up front the last five weeks; it’s been one organization.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for what Rick and company have done over there at Hendrick. It’s so hard to do. We all know in this sport there are no magic bullets, and it’s a combination of everything.”
Here are the positives: Toyota has no pressure of its drivers making the playoffs. Bell, Truex, and Busch are locked in on wins. While his lead has dwindled from over 100 points on second place to just nine, Hamlin is still in a safe spot. Wilson’s target was the four Joe Gibbs Racing drivers making the postseason, and that target should be hit. Plus, Wilson still looks at the next nine races as a chance to catch up and figure out where Toyota is missing things.
“And I’ll be fair in saying it’s not just one thing,” he said. “Yes, you hear Kyle talking about the front end and the grip, but it’s more than that. It always is. We need to be better on the engine front. We need to be better on aero. We need to be better on setups and our mechanical grip. This is the flip side of being relatively secure in the playoffs — it affords the opportunity to try things and get aggressive.
“The 19 (Truex) team in particular. You listen to (crew chief) James Small on the radio…James was mentored by Cole Pearn, and Cole had the reputation of being a bit of a cowboy. They’re not afraid to take some pretty wild swings at the car. The past couple of weeks, James halfway in or earlier he’ll say, ‘Martin, yeah, this is on me. We messed up.’ They tried something, and that’s OK because you learn things from doing that.
“But at the same time, what we can’t forget is that we are representing partners every time we go racing, and to run the way we’re running right now, it’s just unacceptable. So, our heads are down, and we’re going to do our damnedest to turn this around.”
But after running so well at the beginning of the year, how did the switch get flipped? What happened?
Wilson looks back at Kansas, where Busch wrested the win from a dominant Larson after a rash of late cautions changed the race’s complexion. There were signs then of things to come, and now everyone is seeing Larson’s team put together full races and driving to their potential.
“You want to say, ‘Well, what are the Hendrick guys doing?’ And my thought on that is, it doesn’t matter,” said Wilson. “We can’t affect what they’re doing or not doing. We can only affect what we’re doing and what we have control of, and that’s what we’re focused on. The nature of our partnership with Joe Gibbs Racing is such that when we’re sitting together in competition meetings, it’s not focused on one party or another. We own the engine, that much is clear. That is our responsibility, and one of the first things that we’ve done is raise our hand and say we’re not good enough.
“A couple of weeks ago, when we saw that we were falling behind a little bit, we took some actions back at the shop to pull some of our stuff forward, to get more aggressive and bring the developments to the racetrack. The car, the chassis, the aero, the setups, while TRD doesn’t necessarily put our hands on each one of those areas, we do bring tools to the table for our team partners and crew chiefs to give them the direction that they can take in those areas. We go with them to the wind tunnel, we provide simulation, which provides the setups they choose to make at the racetrack.
“Those tools aren’t delivering to the quality and consistency that they need to. What I love about how we participate in the sport, you can’t really draw a line between where does Joe Gibbs Racing start or stop and TRD starts or vice versa. We’re shoulder to shoulder, and when the heat is on, we all feel it, and we all have the attitude that it’s on us collectively to respond.”
There is a clear horsepower advantage by Hendrick and Chevrolet. What the difference is hasn’t been corroborated, but it’s big enough to make the Hendrick cars look untouchable. Wilson said he doesn’t know how far ahead Chevy is or how far behind Toyota sits.
“I take responsibly for the fact that we need to be better,” said Wilson. “You can’t just focus on one area because we have the resources, we have the people that are as smart as anyone else in this garage, and the fact is you have to focus everywhere because, in the end, the only way to catch somebody who’s out front is your slope of improvement has to exceed their slope. Otherwise, you might be better, but they’re going to get better at the same pace.
“Clearly, over the last five weeks, their rate of improvement has been greater than our rate of improvement. That’s noticeable on Sunday afternoons, and it hasn’t made much of a different relative to whether we’re running a 550 spec or 750 spec (engine).”
The challenge is finding those areas to improve, considering NASCAR rules handcuff teams. There are parts freezes in place and regulations that don’t allow for much innovation because the garage has been gearing up for the Next Gen rollout. All Wilson can do is give credit to Hendrick Motorsports for finding advantages and admit the impetus is on Toyota to do the same.
“As crazy as it sounds, this energizes me because this is what we live for,” Wilson said. “This is typically what we’re good at — innovation and finding and discovering. I talked to our team on Tuesday, and it was one of the toughest meetings I’ve had all year. I was on the chip. I was emotional. In times like this, I look to other leaders for inspiration. I take a very humble approach — I do my best, but I’m not a natural-born leader — and I came across a couple of quotes that I just absolutely love and subscribe to.
“One of them is (from) Martin Luther King Jr., and the gist of it is the measure of a person isn’t when things are going well. The measure is when you’re in trouble and when the pressure is on and how you respond to it. The other one is a little more direct (from) Walt Disney in that sometimes when you’re getting kicked in the teeth, you don’t realize that’s a good thing; that’s what you need, is to be kicked in the teeth.
“We’re getting kicked in the teeth right now, and damn it, it’s time to kick back.”