TOYOTA NASCAR NOTES & QUOTES
July 13 – 19, 2015
TOYOTA TIDBITS
BUSCH GETS ANOTHER: Camry driver Kyle Busch claimed his second victory of the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) season at Kentucky Speedway on Sunday, while his Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) teammates finished third (Denny Hamlin), fourth (Carl Edwards) and fifth (Matt Kenseth). It was the first time the organization has placed all four cars in the top-five since adding a fourth Camry to its lineup this season. With the win, Busch jumped to 35th in the NSCS point standings to continue his ascent towards 30th to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup. After missing the first 11 races of the season due to injury, Busch now has two wins and three top-10 results in seven starts.
TOYOTA NH TALLIES: Across NASCAR’s three national touring series and the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East (NKNPSE), Toyota drivers have combined to claim 20 victories at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (NHMS). In the NSCS, former Camry driver Joey Logano earned the Camry’s first win at the one-mile track, while a trio of Toyota drivers captured consecutive victories on the track from 2012 through 2013 – Hamlin, Brian Vickers and Kenseth, respectively. In the NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS), Busch single handedly tallied three wins in a row at NHMS (2009-2011) and also won at the track in 2013, while former Toyota driver Tony Stewart captured the Camry’s first NXS win at New Hampshire in 2008. In addition to the NSCS and NXS, Toyota drivers have five NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) first-place trophies at NHMS and six victories in the NKNPSE.
HOME COOKING: Dave Rogers, the crew chief for Hamlin and the No. 11 FedEx Freight Camry, is a native of Marshfield, Vermont – which is just a two-hour drive from New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Before joining the No. 11 Camry team for the 2015 season, Rogers oversaw Busch’s No. 18 Camry for five full seasons (2010-14) and claimed 13 victories. As a NXS crew chief at JGR, Rogers was responsible for 20 victories with five different drivers from 2006 through 2009. Prior to serving as a crew chief, Rogers was an engineer for JGR from 1998 to 2005.
NOTES, QUOTES & NUMBERS
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS): Camry drivers Matt Kenseth (ninth), Denny Hamlin (11th), Clint Bowyer (15th) and Carl Edwards (17th) currently rank in the top-20 in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) point standings … Dave Blaney earned the inaugural NSCS pole position for Toyota in June 2007 at New Hampshire … The pole came in Toyota’s 17th NSCS race and was the second of Blaney’s career … Jason Shapiro, the car chief for Kenseth’s No. 20 Camry, is a native of Essex, Connecticut.
DENNY HAMLIN, No. 11 FedEx Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Will you approach the New Hampshire race as more of a test session for the Chase?
“We will and that’s kind of the way we’ve been playing these races out. Dover was one of them as well where you try some different things to try to make it better for the Chase. That’s an early Chase race that is very important. We ran well there last year, not great. It’s always been one of my better race tracks so I look forward to going there and just kind of honing our short track program and seeing how it stacks up.”
How important has the return of Kyle Busch been to the overall success of JGR in recent weeks?
“It’s just another person pushing you to the limit. Any time Kyle (Busch) is at the top of the list for us, it pushes us to try to go out there at that speed because we know it’s there. I think it’s just a great talent that pushes us to be better. The meetings have been good and we set out that these four drivers were going to be the four that were going to take JGR to the next level and we finally got them all together at the middle of the season. It’s been good seeing him back in the garage and on the race track.”
MATT KENSETH, No. 20 Dollar General Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Will you approach the New Hampshire race as more of a test session for the Chase?
“I don’t think so, I’ve never shown up at the race track and not wanted to win. We always go to the race track with the idea of trying to win. When you get a few weeks out from the Chase and you have a favorite car or something like that, maybe you don’t bring that to the track and you save it for the Chase. Maybe if you’re three or four laps short on fuel and you don’t necessarily need the points, maybe you try to stretch it for the win. There are just those rare circumstances, but other than that I want to finish as high as I can finish every week whether there’s any points paid or not. We always want to be running good, we always want to win, we always want to keep that momentum and be one of the front-running cars.”
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Interstate Batteries Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How important was it to decrease the amount of points to the top-30 to under 100 with eight races before the cut off?
“Obviously, it’s on our mind but I’m not thinking about the points gained when we win. When we win, I know we did all we can do. It’s more of the 17th -place finish at Daytona and those other guys can have decent finishes at those places. So, because it’s just such an unknown that you kind of look at the points and you’re, like, ‘OK, how many did I gain – I think I only gained six or seven or something last week on the top-30.’ That’s what matters most, for us to go out there and perform, and perform at our best at the level that we know how to do, and that’s what I’ve said since I came back. If we do everything right, and do it the way we know we can, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to average a 14th-place finish, or whatever it’s going to be so I can be in the Chase, be in the top-30. Now with two wins, I never would have imagined we would have gotten two wins this fast. I’ve got a great team and they have done a really good job.”
CLINT BOWYER, No. 15 5-hour ENERGY Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing
Is there a time in the season when it becomes ‘go time’ to put more pressure on for a win to get into the Chase?
“I think it becomes time where you’re out of mulligans. You can kind of drag along through the first part of the year and struggle at times if you will and get by. You get to these summer months and you have to be hitting on all eight cylinders and be running well week in and week out consistently no matter what the race track. We made a change and put Billy Scott (crew chief) in command of the 15 team and it seems like we’ve had good finishes the first few weekends of that. Honestly, that set in for me and our race team weeks ago. We’re out of mulligans and it’s time to go. I think that we’re doing it and we’re working very hard on the race cars, we know where we’re behind.”
NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS): Camry drivers Daniel Suarez (eighth), David Starr (13th) and JJ Yeley (15th) currently rank in the top-15 in the NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS) point standings … Denny Hamlin will pilot the No. 20 JGR Camry at New Hampshire Motor Speedway … In four NXS starts at NHMS, Hamlin has finished in the top-five in each event … Hamlin’s best NXS result at NHMS came in 2008 when he finished second in his last NXS appearance at the track… Busch will make his 300th career NXS start in Saturday’s race at NHMS… Eric McClure will make his 100th start behind the wheel of a Camry this weekend at NHMS.
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS): Tundra driver Matt Crafton leads the NCWTS standings by 20 points over second-place Tyler Reddick … Erik Jones (third), Johnny Sauter (fourth), Timothy Peters (sixth), Cameron Hayley (seventh) and Ben Kennedy (10th) also currently rank in the top-10 for Toyota … With his victory at Kentucky Speedway, Crafton now has four wins in 2015 – twice as many as his previous best season … Crafton currently has an average finish of 4.7 through 10 races … In his back-to-back championship-winning seasons (2013-14), Crafton posted an average finish of 7.9 and 7.0, respectively … The NCWTS next competes on Wednesday, July 22 at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway for NASCAR’s only national series dirt track event.
TOYOTA 2015 NASCAR STATISTICS
Series Races Starts (Drivers) Wins Top-5s Top-10s Poles Times Led Laps Led
NSCS 18 156 (16) 5 17 32 3 78 909
NXS 16 172 (29) 4 18 30 6 50 861
NCWTS 10 88 (15) 5 28 51 4 73 1,170
TOYOTA DRIVER ROSTER – New Hampshire Motor Speedway (NSCS & NXS)
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Denny Hamlin, No. 11 Camry
Clint Bowyer, No. 15 Camry
Kyle Busch, No. 18 Camry
Carl Edwards, No. 19 Camry
Matt Kenseth, No. 20 Camry
JJ Yeley, No. 23 Camry
Jeb Burton, No. 26 Camry
David Ragan, No. 55 Camry
Matt DiBenedetto, No. 83 Camry
NASCAR XFINITY Series
Blake Koch, No. 8 Camry
Derek White, No. 13 Camry
Cale Conley, No. 14 Camry
Daniel Suarez, No. 18 Camry
Jeff Green, No. 19 Camry
Denny Hamlin, No. 20 Camry
Eric McClure, No. 24 Camry
Timmy Hill, No. 26 Camry
JJ Yeley, No. 28 Camry
David Starr, No. 44 Camry
Kyle Busch, No. 54 Camry
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