The Boogey Man had a ham and cheddar cheese omelet for breakfast on Wednesday.
He sat right there at the table for an hour, and a not point did fire shoot out of his nostrils. Nor did lightning flash from his fingertips. If he brought his pitchfork, he must have left it in the Camry.
Jim Aust, the president and chief executive officer of Toyota Racing Development, is not the devil. But over the next nine months, you can rest assured that all manner of evil will be ascribed to him and to the people who'll be working with him as Toyota prepares to enter Nextel Cup and Busch series competition in 2007.
It started long before Toyota, about 100 days ago, made the decision to do just that official during the preseason media tour hosted by Lowe's Motor Speedway.
Ever since the company's entry into the NASCAR Truck Series foreshadowed its move into stock-car racing's top two series, doomsayers have prophesied that Toyota's arrival doth mark the beginning of famine, pestilence and - horror of horrors - American car manufacturers actually getting beat at what used to be their own game.
Supposedly, the story goes, Toyota will come to NASCAR with an unlimited budget and do everything in its corporate power to exceed that. It will throw gobs of money at anybody in the sport with any shred of driving talent or mechanical ability.
Resistance will be futile. One by one, other manufacturers will succumb under the deluge of Toyota's largesse. Race teams will crumble, either because they cannot keep their best people from being seduced by avarice and leaving, or because they cannot afford to play the game at the financial level Toyota will push the sport to.
And then, with the racing landscape scorched and barren, Toyota will walk away.
My computer can't produce the Japanese word for all of that, so the English term will have to suffice.
Hogwash.
Aust came from California this week, where TRD is based, to visit the North Carolina facility where cars and engines its teams will use in NASCAR next year are being developed. Lee White, the TRD vice president who oversees the High Point operation, was at breakfast, too. Both couldn't help but laugh when asked about all the E-vil they're supposedly up to these days.
"Somehow it's something that has been there," Aust said. "It seems like every series we run it, it comes down to 'Toyota is going to bring in bags full of money and take over.' That's not how we look at it."
For starters, Aust said, does anybody really know how much money Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge are spending in NASCAR?
"If we don't have that information, how can people say Toyota is going to be spending more than anybody else?" he said.
Michael Waltrip, who'll own two Toyota Cup teamsnext year, last week emphatically implored the motorsports media to stop reporting that "Toyota" is hiring people for those teams. Each team - Waltrip's, two owned by Bill Davis and two owed by the Red Bull energy drink company - will be making those hires.
Clearly, this has become a talking point for those in the Toyota camp.
Aust denied one current car owner's contention that Toyota had already hired away five of his people. White said that TRD has hired exactly one person in the past four months for its High Point operation. Seven engineers who'd worked in IndyCar racing for Toyota are transferring into the NASCAR effort and relocating to High Point, he said, and another 15-20 jobs will be filled soon as the engineering staff is beefed up.
White and Aust said that it is Toyota's corporate policy not to interview any potential employees encumbered by a current contract.
"We're not going to steal people and we're for sure not going to be offering them $20,000 or $30,000 more than they can make at race teams now," White said.
"We don't have that kind of money and our corporate structure doesn't work like that."
Aust said it's up to Waltrip, Davis and Red Bull to hire drivers and crews.
TRD has a full plate, he said, developing both the current and "car of tomorrow" iterations of a 2007 Toyota Camry model along with engines that will gain NASCAR approval.
"Our role is from a technical partner's side as opposed to actually getting involved with teams and running their activities or making decisions on a day-to-day basis," Aust said.
"They're going to come to us and say, 'Here are two or three driver's who we're interested in. What do you think about them?" And we'll provide our input. But ultimately the decision will be theirs to make."
Aust said he hopes that in 2007 that all of the Toyota teams will be good enough to qualify for each race to earn opportunity to compete.
"We'd like to be able to run somewhere in the middle of the field," he said.
"We don't have the expectation, certainly, of being up running for the Chase for the Nextel Cup the first year in the series.
"If we can prove we can qualify well and can run in the middle of the field, up toward the top 15, we will look at that as a successful start to our operation. Granted, you want to do the best we can...but for us to try to set our sights higher than that would be, I think misleading ourselves."
And he didn't even put hot sauce on his omelet, either.
