Toyota looking to make big deal this weekend

WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL

Fontana, Calif., the site of this weekend’s NASCAR Nextel Cup stop, is Toyota Country.

The big Toyota Racing Development (TRD) shop is just down the road in Costa Mesa, and Toyota’s top executives live and work out there.

The NASCAR season is in the homestretch — two races remain until this year’s Chase for the Championship, and Toyota, stock-car racing’s newest operation, hasn’t fared well.

But it is making its presence known on other fronts.

One big question being bandied about in NASCAR this week is: Is this the weekend that Toyota announces that it’s signing Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and team owner Joe Gibbs to a big deal and thus plucking those three Nextel Cup championship contenders right out of the Chevrolet camp?

Chevy’s Rick Hendrick said he figures that the Gibbs bunch is, indeed, headed to Toyota, but neither Toyota nor Gibbs is offering any solid clues.

Stewart is key player

It appears, however, that Stewart is the key player — does he want to give up his long Chevy ties? There are indications that he doesn’t.

Lee White, Toyota’s top field manager, isn’t saying much about it, either. Instead, White and Toyota are basking in the spotlight of having just added Jacques Villeneuve, the Formula One star, to their NASCAR stable. Villeneuve will drive for Bill Davis’ Trucks team the rest of this season, in preparation for a Cup ride in 2008.

One question being asked about that development is why Chevrolet and Ford both passed on the Villeneuve opportunity. Ford’s Jack Roush seemed close to a deal with Villeneuve a year ago, and when it died, for whatever reason, the ball was in General Motors’ court. But it appears that GM never made a move, despite the almost immediate success of Juan Pablo Montoya, another Formula One driver, with Dodge’s Chip Ganassi.

The specter of Adrian Fernandez may be the reason. Fernandez, the Indy-car star so wildly popular in Mexico, got a Hendrick Chevrolet deal three years ago, but he never got serious about it. Fernandez threw away his opportunity. That may be one reason that Chevrolet officials passed on Villeneuve.

Fernandez was 42 when he got his shot. Villeneuve is 36, and Montoya will turn 32 next month.

More impressive credentials

Villeneuve’s credentials are much more impressive than Montoya’s — he won the 1997 world championship.

Villeneuve and his father, the late Gilles, both raced in Formula Atlantic before moving up. And White actually raced against Gilles Villeneuve “in a former life,” White said with a laugh.

“Jacques is obviously a great driver,” White said. “I started out in 1995 with Newman-Haas [the noted Indy-car team] as team manager, and I was the guy on the pit stand for Michael Andretti. We were leading the big race with 30 laps to go when we had some kind of issue. And Michael Andretti is slowing on the backstretch … And Jacques went on to win that race, and went on to win the CART championship, which propelled him into Formula One, where he became world champion.

“Juan Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve are both good little drivers, and, of course, Jacques does have ’world champion’ next to his name, which is a rather special deal.”

It may be too early to look forward to the first Montoya-Villeneuve duel on a NASCAR track, “But I guarantee you, that will be a race you want to watch,” White said. “I’m sure that Jacques won’t want to get shown up.”