By JIM PEDLEY
The Kansas City Star
NASCAR’s Jim Hunter said the Toyota rule was needed and not unprecedented.
RUSTY JARRETT | Getty Images
NASCAR’s Jim Hunter said the Toyota rule was needed and not unprecedented.

INDIANAPOLIS | Mike Wallace was carrying a sheaf of papers with him Thursday as he walked the infield at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As he paged through the sheaf, discontent spread across his face.

For those who use Toyota engines in the Nationwide series, the papers spelled out a new rule that, in the minds of drivers like Wallace, amounted to a raw deal.

“These are facts,” said Wallace, a St. Louis native, shaking one of the sheets of paper.

For months, opposing teams and drivers complained about Toyota’s Camrys. They said that the Toyota engines had a horsepower advantage. They pointed out that Camrys had won 14 of the 21 races this year, that they led twice as many laps as second-place Chevrolet and that Toyotas led 2,236 of the 3,849 laps run in the series this year.

After the last race, two weeks ago at Chicagoland Speedway, NASCAR officials confiscated 10 engines — of all makes — and took them to the NASCAR research and development center in Concord, N.C., where they were put on a dyno.

Ramsey Poston, NASCAR managing director of corporate communications, said officials wanted to get an accurate read on horsepower.

“We’ve done this several times this year,” Poston said at Chicagoland.

This week, NASCAR officials announced that they were amending the rule book.

In a news release issued Wednesday, NASCAR said, “All engines with a cylinder bore spacing less than 4.470 inches must compete using a tapered spacer with four (4) 1.125-inch diameter holes. At all events, unless otherwise specified, all engines with a cylinder bore spacing of 4.470 inches or more must compete using a tapered spacer with four (4) 1.100-inch diameter holes.”

Toyota fields the only engines that fit that description. In terms of power, the rules will be stripping the Toyotas of about 15 horses.

Lee White, president and general manager of Toyota Racing Development USA., said his company was not happy with the decision.

“We’re extremely disappointed in NASCAR’s decision,” White said Thursday. “In our opinion, there is no technical justification to penalize the Toyota engine utilized in the Nationwide Series. Toyota always has, and will continue to, abide by all NASCAR-mandated engine specifications, and the Nationwide engine was built strictly to NASCAR specifications.”

Wallace, who drives for Germain Racing, said that the horsepower difference between the tested engines was not that great and he had the paperwork to prove it. He said if you threw out the most powerful of the engines tested, and the least-powerful, the difference was only nine horsepower — 638 vs. 629.

“What bothers me is that I have not won a race yet,” Wallace said. “And now, I’m at a 16-horsepower disadvantage. They say they leveled the playing field, but now I’m at a disadvantage.”

NASCAR vice president of corporate communications Jim Hunter, said the action was needed and not unprecedented.

“We have been through this type of thing I can’t tell you how many times,” Hunter said. “We used to let the others catch up, now we are just bringing people back to them.”

Kevin Kennedy, Ford Racing Development communications manager, said that such a move by NASCAR was almost traditional.

“We’ve been on the other side of these rulings,” Kennedy said. “Sometimes they work for you; sometimes they work against you.”

Kennedy said that because Toyota was the newest company to introduce engines into NASCAR, they had been able to more fully explore the parameters NASCAR had set for development.

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