Mar 25, 2008

Toyota Stealing From Roush Racing

The Jack Roush versus Toyota feud has turned ugly. They traded barbs a few weeks ago after Roush Fenway Racing driver Carl Edwards and his team failed post-race inspection as the lid on the oil reservoir was missing.

Lee White, Toyota Racing Development's General Manager, said, "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...If you have 21% more downforce, that's like having 50 (extra) horsepower. There's absolutely something going on there where someone knew what they were doing."

Of course, Roush provided us with a discourteous retort to his former employee's comments. He said, "Toyota and Lee White are besieged by the fact that they've wasted a bunch of money for two years, that they haven't gotten the results that they represented to their management."

Well, the battlelines were drawn and the Cat in the Hat has reportedly thrown out some serious accusations in an interview with ESPN The Magazine that would debase Toyota .

“We had a proprietary Roush Fenway part go missing from one of my race teams, and we recovered it from a Toyota team. I’m not going to say which team it is, but we are considering legal action, or getting NASCAR involved," said Roush.

Hopefully, this is false, because anything that can potentially destroy the integrity of the sport is difficult to overcome. And it would give fans another reason to detest Toyota.

It would be the second Toyota debacle...I'm sure everyone remembers the Mikey-gate at Daytona last year.