Saturday Homestead-Miami Notebook: Manufacturer’s Press Conference

By Reid Spencer and Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service

HOMESTEAD, Fla. –The Chevrolet camp boasts the only active driver who has won more than one championship in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

In fact, Jimmie Johnson owns a record-tying seven Cup titles, and in the process accomplished the record feat of winning five in a row from 2006 through 2010.

Both Johnson and Chevrolet, however, have fallen on hard times of late. Johnson has been stuck on 83 victories at NASCAR’s highest level since the spring Dover race of 2017. His winless streak has reached 94 races.

For the third straight season, no Chevy driver has qualified for the Championship 4 event at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but that’s an issue the manufacturer already has begun to address. Rather than wait for the next generation of Cup car in 2021, Chevrolet will race a new model—the Camaro ZL1 1LE in 2020.

“In the production side of our world, that’s our highest performing production car,” said Jim Campbell, U.S. vice president of performance and motorsports for Chevrolet. “Similar to the ZL1 (the current Chevrolet race car), but it has kind of higher performance elements to it from aero to chassis, and so we’ve incorporated those into the 2020 car…

“Listen, we’re a performance sport, so there’s no excuses here. We’ve got to do better. We expect to do better. If you look at the history of Chevrolet, 39 manufacturer’s championships, 31 drivers, but that’s all history. We’re interested in the next chapter, and that’s what we’re focused on.”

Campbell also pointed out that drivers in the next generation of Chevrolet stars are still learning the ropes in NASCAR’s premier series.

“If you look at the drivers, we’ve had some amazing young drivers that turned into winning drivers that turned into championship drivers that then retired, and so we have a younger crew,” Campbell said. “If you take Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch out of the average age, our average age is like 26 years old.

“So what’s exciting is at one point Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were the young guys. We’ve got the young guys now. It’s an amazing thing to watch how they’re progressing. Some of the drivers have been to these tracks one, two, three times, four times. So every time they go, they’re learning a lot more.”

SUCCESS HAS BEEN THE HALLMARK OF TOYOTA’S BANNER 2019 SEASON

With 43 victories in NASCAR’s three major series—including a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series-best 18—Toyota Motorsports has certainly had a season for the ages. Toyota drivers qualified for all three championship races this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway including three – Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin – in Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400 season finale.

“Obviously this has been a fantastic season for us across all three series,” said Ed Laukes, Group Vice President of Marketing for Toyota Motor North America. “We’re really excited about, first of all, Christopher (Bell) running today, but this whole thing started in Daytona, as you all know.

“In the spirit of what happened at the Joe Gibbs organization, having J.D. [Gibbs] pass and then having the three Gibbs drivers win in Daytona really started off what we would say, was a magical season for us. And hopefully we’ll be able to finish it off next year.”

With Ford and Chevrolet motorsports executives sitting alongside him for their annual meeting with motorsports media on the eve of the Homestead-Miami season finale, Laukes praised his teams and talked about the group’s motivation going forward. There are only seven Toyota cars in Sunday’s race field – compared to 16 for Ford and 17 for Chevrolet. But the numbers are clearly in Toyota’s favor from the sheer number of race victories in 2019 to having three members of the Championship 4.

After snapping a 12-year Chevrolet win streak in 2016, Toyota wrapped up its third manufacturer title in the last four years with Hamlin’s victory at Phoenix’s ISM Raceway last week.

“In reflection, I started in this job in 2007 and we were looking through some of the statistics and in 2007, Chevy won 26 races and Rick Hendrick’s team won 18, so for us to even get to that point from 2007 to 2019, where we not only can match [the Cup win total] but potentially pass the pinnacle of Hall of Fame Rick Hendrick and the legacy that he has within NASCAR is really special.

“The manufacturer’s championship is obviously a piece of personal pride for us that we push all the time, so whether it’s in any one of the three series, it’s a big deal for us, so we’re pretty excited.

COLE CUSTER IS EMBLEMATIC OF FORD’S DRIVER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Cole Custer’s performance on the race track—specifically, seven victories this year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series—helped earn the 21-year-old from Ladera Ranch, Calif., a full-time ride in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series with Stewart-Haas Racing next year.

But Custer also has been learning a great deal in an environment fans can’t see, as part of the driver development program conducted by Ford Performance.

“We have started putting a lot of focus on our driver development over the last several years,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford performance Motorsports. “A lot of the things that we can bring to the party is simulator time, which gives them extra time not just to practice driving the car and getting familiar with different tracks but to also practice and be more effective at their communication or evaluation skills, what do they feel in the car, how do they communicate that back to the crew chief and then make changes.

“So you can go through all of that in the simulator to try to advance and prepare them.”

That sort of training already has added to Custer’s body of knowledge.

“Some of the other things that we’re doing over the last two years have been using our IMSA program with the Mustang GT4 cars to put our truck drivers and our Xfinity drivers into getting them more seat time, first of all, getting them more road course time and more data analysis, again, more feedback, more training, more communication, and specifically for Cole Custer, he’s been doing that for the last two years, as well. So that helps develop him as an individual.

“We’ve seen Cole… for a lot of reasons beyond those, Cole has matured and grown a lot over these last two years, and we’re excited to see him taking that step up to Cup next year.”