THE MODERATOR: Today\u2019s win by Denny Hamlin was the 200th win for Toyota here in the Cup Series. We have brought in Tyler Gibbs, president of TRD.<\/p>\n
Tyler, pretty big milestone for Toyota. What does this mean for you guys?<\/p>\n
TYLER GIBBS: It\u2019s a testament to what\u2019s gone in over, what is it, the last 19 years. The team we have at TRD, the team we have at TMNA, the team we have on the track. When you look at JGR, 23XI, Furniture Row, Red Bull and Michael Waltrip Racing combining for over 200 wins is just incredible for us.<\/p>\n
THE MODERATOR: We\u2019ll open it up to questions for Tyler.<\/p>\n
Q. Tyler, Joey Logano was out there talking about how everybody else has to be pretty much perfect to beat a Toyota car right now. You\u2019re bringing the smoke in terms of having a lot of grip, horsepower. Do you see it that way in terms of your optimism for the rest of the Playoffs, that you have brought something that everybody else is going to have to go through a Toyota car to win this?<\/p>\n
TYLER GIBBS: I think the preparation that all three of our teams have, especially when you look at what JGR and 23XI have done through the season, you watch legacy getting better every week.<\/p>\n
As it relates to the Playoffs, the tracks have suited us well, our drivers well. You\u2019ve seen execution. I think execution is going to be what wins races in the Playoffs and is going to win the championship at Phoenix.<\/p>\n
The cars are so close and there\u2019s so much work that goes into doing all that, that execution can take all that away. So we\u2019ve seen that last week. We\u2019ve seen a little bit this week, maybe less than last week.<\/p>\n
But yeah, we\u2019re just, again, going to keep our heads down, keep preparing the way we have. The work that the teams have done is incredible. Between the work that the TRD folks have done over the course of this year, we had some stumbles at the beginning of the year, and we worked really hard to eliminate those and be ready for the Playoffs.<\/p>\n
This is what we\u2019re here for, so\u2026<\/p>\n
Q. Have you brought an updated engine package in the last month?<\/p>\n
TYLER GIBBS: We haven\u2019t brought specifically a spec upgrade, but we have made some minor improvements to the performance over the course of the last six or eight weeks.<\/p>\n
Q. Do you all at TRD have any angst of trying to get Denny his first championship?<\/p>\n
TYLER GIBBS: Yeah, I think you guys worry about it more than we do. So long as the driver sitting here at Phoenix is wearing a Toyota logo, I\u2019m going to be happy.<\/p>\n
Again, it would be great to get a Hall of Famer like Denny a championship, but we don\u2019t have any favorites when it comes to winning. Whoever wins, that\u2019s what we\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n
It was nice to see a split, which puts more points in the bank for both drivers this week and last week.<\/p>\n
Q. There\u2019s a lot of racing left to go. After these two weeks, what you\u2019re seeing across the board with all the Toyota teams, do you feel any better or worse about championship chances this year, I don\u2019t want to say ending a drought, but it\u2019s been since 2019?<\/p>\n
TYLER GIBBS: You definitely don\u2019t need to remind me (smiling).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s race by race, week to week. Anything can happen. We\u2019re going to Bristol next week. Bristol traditionally is a pretty good track for us and for our teams and for our drivers. But it\u2019s Bristol. It\u2019s the night race. It\u2019s a Playoff race. The stakes are high for everybody.<\/p>\n
One mistake by anybody can cost other Playoff contenders all kinds of issues. We\u2019re just going to focus one race at a time. I know that\u2019s clich\u00e9. It doesn\u2019t really do us any good to look that far down the road. We\u2019ll prepare for this week. Look at the week after as well, because it takes so much work to get ready for these races.<\/p>\n
THE MODERATOR: Tyler, congratulations on hitting that milestone. Thanks for coming in tonight.<\/p>\n
TYLER GIBBS: Thank you.<\/p>\n
NASCAR PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE MODERATOR: Today\u2019s win by Denny Hamlin was the 200th win for Toyota here in the Cup Series.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[11050,655,87411,87412,425,2094,562,99,20340],"class_list":["post-140418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-joey-logano","tag-michael-waltrip","tag-michael-waltrip-racing","tag-nascar","tag-racing","tag-series","tag-sports","tag-toyota"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}