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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: DAYTONA 500

February 21, 2016

David Wilson

Daytona Beach, Florida

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by David Wilson, who is the president of TRD.
David, not only is this your first win at the Daytona 500 for Toyota, you did it in pretty magnificent fashion finishing 1‑2 with Toyotas, the closest margin of victory in the Daytona 500 history, and you also had four of the top five cars. Talk about what this means for Toyota.
DAVID WILSON: This is very difficult for me to put in words. I cannot articulate adequately what this means to Toyota.
I'll start by saying it's our single biggest race in our company's history. I'll put it in front of the Indy 500, which was a pretty special one back in 2003.
THE MODERATOR: We'll open it up to questions.

Q. You've been clicking off in the last year the milestones, All‑Star Race, the Brickyard, first championship, now Daytona. What has been the difference? What clicked that's all of a sudden made you guys big‑game winners?
DAVID WILSON: I've said this repeatedly lately. It's not a single thing that's clicked. This was our 10th try at the Daytona 500. When we came into the sport, we struggled. We were not ready. We didn't know. So it's taken time for us to collectively build an organization with our team partners that is capable of winning races and competing for championships.
Today was the quintessential, perhaps, example of what that teamwork has paid off in. I am truly impressed, proud, moved by what our drivers did, our teams did together.
We had a plan. When we went out in practice, I think it was Saturday afternoon, the five Toyotas lined up, we were the top of the timing and scoring. We realized that our five cars working together could truly do something special on Sunday.
But think about how many plans you put in place before the race as momentous as this. You can't control what you can't control. Most of the time those plans go by the wayside.
But our teams, our drivers, had the discipline and the trust in each other to execute that plan to a T. To come all the way to the white flag, 1‑2‑3‑4‑5, and then it was a race. Today was a special day for Toyota and a special day for Joe Gibbs Racing and Furniture Row, our new partner.

Q. Martin had made a couple comments about how important it was for him to get the move with Furniture Row to Toyota off to a good start, but also the integration with Joe Gibbs Racing. Can you talk about how difficult or not that transition was for the 78 in the off‑season going to Toyota. I know it's only one race, but how do you feel the integration of the group is doing?
DAVID WILSON: Well, let me put it this way: we tried for years and years to build a collaboration between Joe Gibbs Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing. We got better. We started sharing more. But it really wasn't the type of collaboration that we wanted to see happen.
At the outset when we started talking to Furniture Row, when Joe Gibbs and Barney Visser and ourselves have dinner, I sensed there was a level of trust in each other and a shared value structure that could allow this collaboration to actually succeed.
So having said that, on paper it all looked good. But it's up to the men and women in both of those shops to execute that collaboration.
It's very early. The off‑season was very stressful because we couldn't go to work until November 22nd. That was 90 days ago today. What they were simply able to achieve to get to the Daytona 500 was truly impressive all by itself.
So far so good.
As far as today goes, let me be candid. There's going to be a natural level of question amongst the four JGR drivers about this fifth team and driver. It's not ingrained, it's not natural for any type of organization to share and to work together in that fashion.
What Martin Truex Jr. did today was huge in saying that he wants to be on this team. I'm incredibly impressed. I thought he won the race actually. It wasn't until I saw the live timing and scoring that I realized that Denny won it.

Q. You're here among friends, you can tell us. Who were you pulling for?
DAVID WILSON: You have heard me say before, I don't care what Toyota wins, as long as it's a Toyota (laughter).
We won, and that's all I care about, yeah.

Q. With everything y'all have accomplished, have you checked all the boxes now?
DAVID WILSON: I don't think you ever stop checking the boxes. But today, the Daytona 500, the great American race, was the only race that Toyota had not won. We've checked that round of boxes.
We're going to take a few hours to try and soak this in and live in the moment. But then it's back to work tomorrow because we've got another season to start.
This is the plate race, and now we go to Atlanta where we've got to run our new open stuff and see how we stack up.

Q. Nothing is a given on a plate track, but it seemed like over the last five, six laps that a Toyota was going to win. Was there ever a moment as this was unfolding that you thought, This might be our day, we're going to win at Daytona finally?
DAVID WILSON: I think it was probably around halfway that I thought we had a good shot, a reasonable shot. But I never took anything for granted.
I think a lot of drivers have talked this week about the nature of racing here at Daytona, and Talladega for that matter, has changed.
Five years ago, ten years ago, I think it was much more of a variable, a wild card, a lottery. Use whatever cliché you want. But certainly over the past couple of years our teams and drivers have proven that you have to have, in order to win this race, equipment strong enough to run up front and stay up front. You have to have drivers who can manage a race and manage plate racing. That is a special skill. It really has developed into that level of skill.

Q. After being so dominant in IndyCar and CART before, was it humbling to come here and have to spend this amount of time to move up?
DAVID WILSON: It was incredibly humbling. But we didn't expect to succeed either. Obviously back in 2004, 2007, when we started Cup racing, the fans were apprehensive. I think it was a polarizing issue, Toyota being here in the sport. I think our struggles, it so much humanized us and showed everybody that we're going to have to work as hard as anybody. Nothing comes easy. The level of competition that this sport has amongst the teams and engineers is unlike anything we've ever seen, including CART and IndyCar.

Q. You're still relatively new in this role. You've won in the last few months the championship and the Daytona 500. Should you retire?
DAVID WILSON: Thanks for that (laughter). I hadn't thought of that.
No. You know, I am the one that's lucky enough to have had this opportunity. The team that TRD and Toyota have, I had almost my entire board of directors here to enjoy this win with us today. But we couldn't do it without the support of our organization.
I could not do this. I work for 250 people at TRD. My job is to make sure that they have the resources they need to compete and that we have the relations and the trust and confidence of our team partners to compete.
So I'm the lucky one to be up here.

Q. How far does this go, the last few months? In a sport that's fairly cyclical, if there are some tough times, you know you've done it before, it's not something that's unattainable.
DAVID WILSON: It certainly helps to come out of the gates like this. But I also realize that in some respects the season really does start in Atlanta. I'm just as anxious right now as I was the week before coming down here because the beauty of this sport is you don't really know how you're going to stack up against your colleagues and your competitors until you run in anger on the racetrack.
We demonstrated that our plate stuff is okay, is pretty good. But we won't know how we're going to stack up until we get to Atlanta for the majority of the season.

Q. You've said all these reasons why it's great and important, but why is it the biggest race victory in the history of Toyota Racing?
DAVID WILSON: This is the greatest race in America. For our company to have won it makes it that special. I think most of you have heard the reason that we came into the sport was to connect with the American fans, to talk about how we build every Camry in America.
Camry was named the most American‑made car. So I still remember what resonated my first time here in 2007, this moniker: the great American race. As we were looking at why we should come into NASCAR, that was a big part of it, to have a shot at winning the great American race, to be able to talk to the incredible, powerful fan base that NASCAR has.
How do you quantify the value? It's truly stunning and special.

Q. Back in the beginning, in the Bill Davis and Michael Waltrip days, all those guys, did you think it would take this long to get this good? Did you sort of figure it was going to be a long, tough slog?
DAVID WILSON: We knew it was going to be a long, tough slog. I'll admit that I thought within the first five years we might have a shot at a championship. I think the first time I cried in this sport was 2010 when Denny came to Homestead with a 15‑point lead, and we lost. Had he won, we would have made that five‑year target.
Like in life when you go through trials, you have the emotion and the heartache, when you do achieve a level of success, it truly is sweeter. Perspective truly is a wonderful thing to have.

Q. Because you talk about how momentous this win is, what does your mind go back to over the things that you had to go through to get to this point, to win this race, whether it's all the explanations to company executives why you weren't doing better, what happened? What makes this more emotional for you?
DAVID WILSON: I'm not sure if I can pick one or other events. You can go back to 2007, the Daytona 500, our first Daytona 500, if you all recall, there was a bit of controversy within the Toyota camp (smiling).
It started there. I still remember 2007. Our goal was to qualify for races. We didn't know if we could. For Bill Davis and Michael Waltrip and Red Bull, we brought two new teams in the sport.
It's heart‑wrenching that none of the freshmen class are still with us. That's not the end of the story that any of us wanted to see. But again, it goes to how difficult, how competitive the sport is.
It was a combination. You remember the years where TRD, Toyota, got a lot of heat. We get our hands dirty. I often say that sometimes that's not the most fun way to do it. Sometimes I want to say, Just let the teams do everything and we'll support them as best we can.
That's not our culture. Our culture is about participating, learning, getting our hands dirty, building a level of trust with Joe Gibbs and his family.
They took a chance on Toyota. Look at where they were. Three‑time champions. They took a chance on us. The pressure that put on our shoulders to deliver was enormous. I hated that it's taken us this long.
Again, back to the perspective point. Going through that together, the bond that we have with Joe Gibbs and his family and his team is stronger than ever.

Q. A long time ago Bill France Sr. told my dad about some of the benefits in passenger cars that come directly from NASCAR research. What kind of developments are you seeing in Toyota that may have come about because of your participation in NASCAR?
DAVID WILSON: Well, I always say that the biggest benefit in participating in racing, in motorsports, is the people, the engineers, the technicians that are involved in the sport, and the extreme pressure, the discipline that they work under. That develops them into better engineers. Those engineers go on to help support our company build better cars and trucks.
THE MODERATOR: David, thank you for joining us this evening. Congratulations to you and your colleagues at Toyota on the win today.
DAVID WILSON: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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