Former Friends Turned Bitter Rivals: the Roush-White Saga

For quite some time now, Jack Roush has been battling his former employee and current Toyota Racing GM Lee White in a rather harsh and uncharacteristic battle of words. The feud between the two really came to light only a couple of weeks into the new NASCAR season, and escalated in the public eye at the beginning of March through an article posted on nascar.com.  The article went into lengthy detail about Roush’s opinion on the entire Toyota setup this year as he accused them of dumping more money into their NASCAR operations than any other teams are able to – or, at least willing to – afford. The end result, he insinuated, was a lot more horsepower than the other manufacturers are capable of running on race day.

“I think the chassis dynamometer inspections that NASCAR has done has shown that they’ve got more power than the other manufacturers. Again, that’s a reflection of how much money they spend and what NASCAR has approved for them to have in terms of configuration of the engines,” says Roush. He later went on to add, “There is a limit to what you can reasonably afford to spend given the tradition of sponsorship and the traditional level of support that comes from the manufacturers, and the traditional level of support that comes from the decals on the car. If Toyota is upsetting that, if they’re spending more money, which I’m given to believe they are, then they’ve got an advantage. But, it’s not unfair, because if we wanted to spend or could spend that much money, we could do the same thing. The problem is that nobody can match Toyota dollar for dollar over the long haul.” He harped on the issue some more by adding the finishing touches, “They’ve got a history of spending their money wisely, and in quantities that outspend or outstrip the other manufacturers. And, I’ve got every reason to believe they’ll do it here. It’s been their practice to do that in Formula One and open-wheel racing.”

Jack Roush has openly been against the transition of Toyota into NASCAR since the plans were first put into motion a few years ago, and doesn’t appear to be letting up on the issue. He feels that with Toyota suddenly in the fold, they could change the shape of NASCAR forever in a way he doesn’t seem to feel is beneficial to the sport. NASCAR has stated that there hasn’t been anything in their dyno testing that would suggest that Toyota has any significant advantage in horsepower over any of the other manufacturers.

All the talk about Toyota’s horsepower came after the series ran their scheduled events at Daytona and California, and despite not winning either race, Toyota appeared to be a dominant factor in both. The next week, however, all of the Toyota star drivers either struggled with their cars late in the race or ran into various issues on the track, and Kyle Busch was the highest finishing Toyota in the race in 11th place. Carl Edwards won that race, but shortly after was the focus of NASCAR’s post-race inspection in which they discovered the lid on the no. 99 car’s oil tank to be missing. Suddenly, the focus shifted from Toyota over to Roush Racing.

Although I didn’t pick up on any commentary from Lee White in response to Jack Roush’s criticism of their program a week earlier, White didn’t appear to have missed the articles and was now ready to take aim at his own issues. He was very prompt to throw allegations in the direction of Roush-Fenway Racing following the UAW-Dodge 400 in Vegas, accusing the team of intentionally leaving the lid off of Edwards’ tank in an effort to allow for better air circulation through the engine and create additional downforce, or to give the car an extra bit of push to put it simply.

White reported to USA Today that in wind tunnel testing that Toyota had done in Germany, they discovered that removing the cap could actually result in 170 lbs of extra downforce for the car. Additionally, he stated that a video replay of one of Edwards’ stops on pit road revealed a member of his pit crew tugging on the fender to open a 3-inch gap on the inner panel, which Toyota’s tests had shown could create yet another 70 lbs of downforce.

Roush responded by questioning the integrity of the Toyota group, wondering why they would test a car with a missing oil lid and a 3-inch gap in the inner panel when both are illegal setups. “Why would they do that? I wonder how many times they tested the rocket fuel on Michael Waltrip’s car before they decided to take the chance at Daytona?” he asked, referring to the incident that disqualified Waltrip from competing in the 2007 Daytona 500.

Jack accused White of being a cheater when he was with the organization in the late 80’s, and that was the primary reason for him not bringing him along when he made the move to NASCAR. White obviously had a different recollection of events, stating that Steve Hmiel and Robin Pemberton had a problem with White tagging along. Although he didn’t want to accuse his old friend directly of being a cheater, he did also state the following on the day that NASCAR announced their penalties on Edwards and Roush: “There’s absolutely something going on there where someone knew what they were doing. I must applaud NASCAR. Given the safety implications of opening that oil tank to the driver, the penalty could have been more severe. I guarantee you the cover bolts didn’t fall out, because if they fall, the engine leaks and you can’t run. If you want something to fall off, you fix it so it can.”

This battle between former friends has certainly kept many fans entertained through the first four races of the season, and that was all prior to Toyota being able to actually win their first Cup Series race. Now that Toyota has won (referencing Kyle Busch’s victory in Atlanta) and sits atop the Sprint Cup Series points standings, this ongoing saga is sure to keep popping into the NASCAR columns every now and again for quite awhile.

DYN Imposes … This week, Do You NASCAR also asks its readers:

1) Has Toyota’s success in 2008 been a result of extra horsepower they’re getting from their cars that other manufacturers are unable to produce? If that is the case, should NASCAR be putting restrictions in place to level the playing field?
2) Did the no. 99 team of Carl Edwards intentionally leave the lid off of the oil tank during the UAW-Dodge 400 in Las Vegas?
3) How many drivers will Toyota field in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, and who will be the highest finishing Toyota in the points standings?
4) Roush-Fenway Racing vs. Joe Gibbs Racing … which is better?