It’s a strategy that is not only by design, it’s something Wilson believes has aided in Toyota’s rise through the ranks to become the leading manufacturer in the Cup Series.
“That has become our mantra and really what I would qualify as a focused strategy, is the fact that we don’t try to have the most cars in the field, but rather maximize the cars that we do put on the track,” Wilson said. “It kind of happened circumstantially, initially, to be honest. We’ve never had the most cars, but what we’ve come to appreciate is the reality that we do have limited resources.
“We don’t have an ever-expandable budget as we try to add teams,” he added. “So the challenge with having more cars and more teams is how you manage the resources and the tools that you’ve developed in order to help your team partners.
“To be clear, Toyota and TRD have a different model of engagement than our colleagues at Ford and Chevrolet,” Wilson continued. “And I do think that the ‘less-is-more’ strategy is even more suited toward us because of the way that we participate with our racing teams. It has come to serve us well and yet it still requires immense discipline. Joe and I talk about this all the time, that the discipline of making critical decisions is filtered through the lens of ‘will this help us as a team and is this going to help us win races and championships?’
“My thought has always been that if you can focus on fewer higher-quality teams and cars, I think that can serve you well in the sport … and so far, it has seemed to do just that for us as a manufacturer.”
Prior to the first of Busch’s two Cup Series titles in 2015, Toyota had never topped the drivers’ championship at NASCAR’s premier level. Now, Toyota not only has three driver titles, but has also won three of the last four Cup Series manufacturers’ championships.
In fact, just one year before that title run by Busch, Toyota won a scant two races in the Cup Series and appeared to be digging out of a mammoth competitive hole compared to its rivals.
Then came a technical partnership between Joe Gibbs Racing and Furniture Row Racing — a four-year tenure that produced the marque’s second championship with Truex and provided Toyota with the extra data it needed to increase its performance level.
“The 2014 season was really the genesis for our partnership with Furniture Row and that is one of the partnerships and initiatives that we undertook that I’m most proud of,” recalled Wilson. “It was the first time we’ve facilitated an open book, transparent, cooperative relationship that produced the most success we’ve ever had during that narrow window. It’s an indicator that I always keep close by, a reminder that you can never get too full of yourself. You can never think you’re better than anyone else.
“Yes, we won the title in 2019, but next year it starts all over again and it doesn’t matter what you accomplished the year before,” Wilson noted. “If you look at 2013, that was the year that (Matt) Kenseth joined us and won seven or eight races and then just like that we went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in an instant. But I like to think that as painful as it was, it served us well and continues to serve us well as we move forward.”
Pressed on whether he feels there was one specific turning point for Toyota at the Cup level, Wilson couldn’t pin-point a single occurrence.
“I wish I could put my hand on a silver bullet; I really do,” he admitted. “But the reality is that in this sport, the evolution of the sport is such that it’s a hundred things that you have to focus on and be well at in order to be successful. Really, I think the secret to our success is that we don’t focus on just having the best engine or just having the best aerodynamics or just having the best drivers. We focus on all of it and we appreciate and understand how hard it is to compete at this level.
“If you look at what happened at Homestead, two out of our three teams fell down with execution mistakes that prevented them from ultimately contending for the championship, but we were fortunate to have a third team and driver in Kyle Busch who was able to put everything together and bring that trophy home for all the Toyota employees that put work into making our participation in NASCAR possible,” Wilson said. “That’s proof of how hard it is to be successful at the top level and how much focus on the things that allow us to compete it takes when you get to the Cup Series. You have to have every little thing go right in order to succeed and that’s something we’ve worked very hard on doing.”
Wilson hasn’t forgotten how far Toyota has come.
“Just six years ago, we won two races,” he said. “There was a point in that season I’ll never forget, where it crystallized for us and for Joe Gibbs Racing the mistakes that we made at the front end of the season and we pressed and thrashed to correct those things and build the foundation for where we now sit. And you all see that it still took several years to really manifest in the way that it has now.
“It’s been a long road to get to this point, but we can’t get complacent and we don’t want to,” Wilson added. “We’re just as ready to go back in for 2020 and start the count over again, hoping for even better days to come.”