Michael Waltrip took the lead last weekend in becoming the first of Toyota's entries into the 2007 Nextel Cup Series to put most of its pieces in place and actually announce them.
By introducing former Cup champion Dale Jarrett as his teammate in a second Toyota Camry fielded by Michael Waltrip Racing next season, Waltrip has positioned his organization as a potentially potent force right out of the box.
Michael Waltrip's average finish this season is 29.9. Credit: Autostock
While preparing for the Dodge Charger 500 at Darlington Raceway, Waltrip sat down to discuss, among other things, his initial testing with the Toyota engine, his experience working with Toyota, getting a full-time crew chief in place for 2006 and hiring David Reutimann to drive one of his Busch cars in 2007.
Q: Michael, along with the excitement of finally being able to announce Dale Jarrett as your teammate, how much relief is there for you to finally be able to tell that tale and get people off your back?
Waltrip: I don't look at it as that. Racing and building a team is a project. You've got 100 pieces you've got to fit together and when you get them all fit together there will be 100 more you'll have to assemble at that point.
So I felt good about Dale joining us for the last couple weeks. Once I felt good about that I sort of moved my focus to something else and I've been trying to continue the build-up.
I'm very proud to tell the world that Dale's going to join us and very proud to have him on our team. He's a wonderful person and he's going to be a real asset to all of our sponsorship partners and to the competition side.
He knows what it feels like to win lots of races and a championship, and I'm glad he's going to be with us.
Q: You've been building this dream for quite some time now, so how do you quantify where you are? Now that you've got two drivers signed for the Cup side, what do you think is the next chapter?
Waltrip: Where we're at is that we think we're doing everything that is possible for a new organization to be doing in order to have success when the 2007 season starts.
Burger King's five-race deal with Bill Elliott this year is a key to giving our guys some in-the-garage experience. They're building up cars that will be Chevys this year but we'll just cut the bodies off of them and make them Toyotas next year.
Of all the things we'll learn this year, the Burger King piece to it is really key. Having Bill Elliott driving that car, with his knowledge and experience in the sport, is key.
Getting Dale Jarrett -- a champion -- on our team is big. With Larry Carter and Bobby Kennedy on the competition side, I just think that we're doing everything a start-up team could do in order to ensure a successful season next year.
Q: You've tested a Toyota engine in a Chevrolet chassis built in your shop, so after that session at Lowe's Motor Speedway, how do you feel your Chevy chassis is, and what was your impression of the Toyota engine?
Michael Waltrip and crew chief Larry Carter have had to focus much of their time on qualifying for each week's race. Credit: Autostock
Waltrip: Well, I was impressed with the Toyota engine. I liked it because it felt good. Bill [Elliott] liked it, too, and that was something that was real important for me -- that Bill would get a feel for it and think that it was something that he liked as well.
We both agreed that we liked it. The car handled great. We've got a lot of bridges to cross and a lot to do between now and 2007, and getting that piece of the puzzle in this early, and getting them some information and some feedback, I think was pretty key.
Q: Was there anything distinctive about the Toyota engine in comparison to some other engines you've worked with lately?
Waltrip: No, because the NASCAR box is pretty tight, and there is only so much you can do. You know, some motors at times feel like they have holes in them -- either they'll run good on the bottom or they'll run good on the top.
They'll have different areas where they'll perform good. But that motor just felt smooth to me from the bottom to the top. It was nothing earth-shattering, power-wise, but it just had a good, solid feel.
Q: Who is building your Toyota engines?
Waltrip: That's a TRD [Toyota Racing Development] project. I don't know what the dyno numbers are. Compared to the Dodge, I'm sure they're about the same.
They have chassis dyno races every week in the Truck Series and the Dodge wins every now and then, the Chevy wins every now and then and Ford and Toyota do, too.
There is no [target] number and there is no magic. That's not where the magic is going to come from. It's going to be building an organization, with Toyota's support -- that's where the magic will be [with the people].
Q: With your announcements, only 30 percent of the Toyota teams' driver lineups have been revealed, but with what you know and have experienced so far, what do you feel will be the Toyota teams' ability to work together next season?
Waltrip: I know that [working together as a group under one manufacturer] -- that is a part of the process in the Truck Series, where they have meetings and they all work closely together and they all understand what each other runs, setup-wise.
So for the Toyota folks, that's their process and that's how they like to see things done. But we're not at that point yet.
All the teams are at a point where they are just building up, so we're going to have to have meetings and direction from [the Toyota] folks to see exactly how the deal will work and play out in 2007 and beyond.
But I foresee being able to work together closely with anybody, and especially my other driver. Dale is going to bring a lot to the table, from an input side.
Q: You're well into this project, so as a team owner, what has been the biggest plus in working with Toyota?
Waltrip: Credibility. When I went to NAPA and I went to Domino's, Burger King, Best Western and Coca-Cola -- all the sponsors that have signed up so far -- they believed in me and Ty [Norris, MWR general manager] and our management team, and they believe that Toyota will build us a car that we can go out and make some headlines with. They wanted to be a part of that.
So the credibility piece is the biggest thing that it added to my organization. If you think of Roush Racing you think of Ford. If you think of Hendrick Motorsports you think of General Motors.
I would never have been able to break those stereotypes -- no matter what kind of deal I could have worked out with a different manufacturer. But with Toyota, and being in on the ground floor, they know that we're going to be a part of their plan going forward.
And that credibility is what enabled me, not only to get wonderful sponsors, but also to get Dale Jarrett and Ty Norris and some of the key individuals in place in our organization.
Q: From the driver's standpoint, will you have to wait until you've actually driven a complete Toyota racecar, or can you tell what their high points will be from their engineering and other items right now?
Waltrip: The cars and engines in the garage area in Nextel Cup are all a whole lot alike, because of NASCAR's rules -- which is good because it keeps us from spending money in circles.
We all have the same toys to play with -- or the same tools to work with. So with manufacturer support, if you will, when you drive a Chevrolet, you're basically representing that company.
When you go out on the racetrack, your car, and the support it has comes from their engineering and their ingenuity. And so, when I go out on the racetrack with my Toyota, that's what I'm going to be racing with.
I'm going to be racing a car that won't be a whole lot unlike any other car in the garage area -- but the knowledge of springs and shocks and tire pressures and aerodynamics -- all those things come from my manufacturer: Toyota.
And that's what's key to me, is the fact that I have that type of manufacturer support and that type of backing that allows an individual like me to tell a sponsor like NAPA, 'Hey, I think we can go fight,' and 'I think we can go and race Jack Roush and Rick Hendrick.'
It enables me to tell them, 'I think we can be successful.' And Toyota makes that possible.
Q: What's the timeframe for announcing the sponsorship on D.J.'s program?
Waltrip: That's a good question. We haven't really set a timeframe for that. We are working through that very subject now.
We didn't really have a solid timeframe on when we were gonna announce Dale as our driver. It just happened that the word got out so rampantly that we didn't have a choice, so we had to let everybody know.
We would have liked to be further down the road on the sponsorship piece for it before we made [Dale's] announcement, but that just wasn't possible.
We'll work through that over the next couple weeks and maybe as soon as June or July we'll have another announcement.
Q: Looking at this year's Cup program, you did some personnel movement, with Larry Carter and Bobby Kennedy getting more involved there; so after a couple races what's your take on that?
Waltrip: The problem with that is, I find myself torn. This 2006 season is important, obviously, to establish Waltrip Racing in the sport.
But Bill Elliott's Burger King program is also important in 2006 -- and that's Larry's responsibility. And ramping-up for our 2007 Toyota teams is very important -- and that's Bobby Kennedy's responsibility.
So it puts us in a position where we really have to be careful on splitting someone's responsibilities up so that you don't get in a position of halfway doing both, because if you do, both will suffer.
So the goal right now is to get a full-time crew chief in at Bill Davis Racing to look over my cars for me. We're working hard on that, but Bobby and Larry and some of their guys are trying to fill the gap until we get that done.
No really solid, long-term decisions have been made on what's going to happen there. We're just trying to fight through until we get a guy in place to help us down the road.
Q: Since you dropped out of the top 35 in owners' points, these last few weeks have been kind of nerve-wracking. Did you know you were such a good qualifier, considering what's on the line?
Waltrip: Yeah, I always knew I was, but I haven't really qualified good. I qualified 30th at Richmond and 37th at Darlington, and people said, 'That's good.' And I said, 'No, it's not.'
We didn't test well at Charlotte, so we're going to catch a break by being able to go over there for the all-star race, take a different car and try to figure out what it's going to take to be successful over there.
The problem was, at Richmond, when I qualified I knew I was going to run crappy in the race. I mean, our car had no grip in the front tires -- and I just threw down a lap [in qualifying] that worked.
It worked for a couple of laps, but I knew that it wasn't going to be a good night. We're sitting here talking prior to Darlington, and I qualified kind of bad, but I have a lot of confidence in how my car feels for the race [where Waltrip finished 35th].
So I believe qualifying is important, but when you qualify and run like I did at Richmond, that doesn't get you anywhere.
I need to qualify and run up into the top 20 at least, in order to try to be a part of the top 35 and not have to worry about qualifying.
But this ain't easy.
Q: For 2007 will you continue the Busch program, with Toyotas? And I understand David Reutimann is going to drive one of your cars?
Waltrip: We're going to continue in the Busch Series with Toyotas.
[David] hasn't been announced, but it's locked in, so I guess I just announced it. We don't have all the details worked out, but David is a part of our plans, going forward.
What a wonderful person he is. He's a good guy and a heckuva driver, so we'd like to see him win that Truck Series championship this year.
He's got a ways to go to figure out how to beat Todd [Bodine] and Ted [Musgrave], but he's right there on their heels so hopefully he'll have a good year in the truck and go out and run really well in Busch next year.
Q: Commercially speaking, what's the next TV ad we can expect to see featuring Michael Waltrip? Can you give us a sneak preview?
Waltrip: Oh, I don't know. I haven't made any that haven't been out, I don't think.
The NAPA ones are really funny, with the kids in school. That was just a treat for me to go to school and do those. I'm real proud of those and I think the ones with Darrell this year were particularly good, too.
Q: How was the school selected where those were shot? Was it your choice?
Waltrip: No, I didn't have anything to do with it. The creative folks that do the NAPA commercials are really spot-on every time, and we go down there and show up in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where they've got a school chosen.
They had a bunch of kids decked-out in their NAPA suits. I smiled for two days doing that, because it was just perfect.
If I would have written that script myself, that's exactly what I would have wanted it to look like.
