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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: PURE MICHIGAN 400August 16, 2015David WilsonBROOKLYN, MICHIGAN THE MODERATOR: Moving along with our post‑race availability, each NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway, Michigan recognizes the winning manufacturer. Accepting the Michigan Heritage Trophy for today's win on behalf of Toyota is David Wilson, president and general manager of Toyota Racing Development. David, this is your first Michigan Heritage Trophy win; talk about getting the first trophy win here today with Matt Kenseth. DAVID WILSON: Thank you. This is truly a special day. I remember when Roger and his team rolled out this concept of a manufacturer's trophy here in Michigan and thought it was brilliant because obviously this is the home to all the manufacturers, including Toyota. We have a major technical center in Ann Arbor, so to finally bring it home is really special. We've been coveting this. It's funny because the first idea we had was, you know what we need to do is after we win it, we need to bring it back to Detroit, biggest auto show in the world, and proudly display it in our space. I've already been in touch with our management team, and they are reserving space for it as we speak. Q. I had the impression just looking at the speed of Matt and the other Toyotas that the Joe Gibbs Racing cars are far ahead of the other Toyota cars in Sprint Cup. Do you have an explanation for that? DAVID WILSON: Well, actually I would question whether that's actually true. Prior to Clint having his issue, he ran inside the top three, top 5 for most of the day. The Waltrip organization has struggled a bit, but if you look at the performance over the past few weeks, they've definitely closed the gap. Certainly we collaborate with all of our teams, but they're still independently run and managed. But the good news is that we're seeing a positive trend, not just across the Joe Gibbs Racing camp but the Michael Waltrip Racing team is getting better every week. THE MODERATOR: Toyota has won five of the last NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races, the last two NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races. Touch a little bit on the program's success here as of late. DAVID WILSON: Well, certainly we're awful proud of how far we've come. We all know how difficult 2014 was for us, even though we came very close to winning a championship. But really it's been the result of a tremendous amount of hard work by our team at TRD, by our teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing. People tend to think that this came on like a light switch and what did you find, but the reality is this sport is so difficult, so competitive, it's about working hard, and really that turnaround started last summer. We knew we were in trouble. We buckled down, and we kept digging, and so what we're trying to do right now is not get full of ourselves. This was a very competitive race. We had a lot of fast cars out there. They're closing the gap is what I sensed today, so we need to keep digging and keep our heads down. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, David. We appreciate you joining us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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