There are questions being raised about Toyota’s commitment to a Busch series effort next season, and indications of a possible rift between NASCAR and the Japanese car maker about engine issues related to NASCAR’s proposed engine of the future. NASCAR’s meetings with the sport’s four car makers about specifications for the engine of the future, tentatively designed to roll out in 2007, have been takin place since December. The Toyota engine, according to its rivals, has a technical edge in several respects, and the engine of the future project was in part designed to put all four car makers back on equal technical footing. The NASCAR-Toyota debate comes as word breaks that NASCAR and Honda are reported to be in talks for an engine program of some sort, still undefined, but apparently tied in with NASCAR’s technical institute in Mooresville.(Winston Salem Journal)(6-5-2005)
UPDATE: NASCAR’s controversial engine of the future suddenly appears all but dead, according to engine builders and car owners, after the latest round of meetings between NASCAR executives and a few Nextel Cup team owners. However, that would lock in the current Toyota and Dodge engine designs as still technically superior to the present Ford and Chevrolet engines. And it would leave Honda – widely expected to make a run into NASCAR racing – with a clean sheet of paper to design its own new NASCAR V-8, which rivals worry would be even better than any engine in the sport right now. NASCAR’s engine of the future was to have debuted at California in February 2007. Now it has been pushed back to 2009 or 2010. Add to that, word that NASCAR is apparently working with Honda on an engine development operation for the NASCAR Technical Institute in Mooresville [NC], and it’s easy to see why the NASCAR garage here has been in such turmoil the past 48 hours. On the engine front, Ford’s Jack Roush says that Toyota has the best engine design in the sport at the moment and Dodge has the second-best. GM officials agree, which is one reason that GM has been promoting NASCAR’s proposed new engine. Ford’s Roush, however, says that such a new engine would be very expensive, though he has reluctantly hired engine designers for the project.(Winston Salem Journal)(6-6-2005)
