NASCAR: Toyota working to find more horsepower for engines - MotorSportsTalk

Last year for Toyota Racing Development, the power of their NASCAR Sprint Cup Series engines wasn’t the problem. It was their reliability.

This year, the situation has been reversed.

While TRD has largely avoided the engine failures that plagued them in 2013, it’s clear that they’ve been unable to match, performance-wise, the Hendrick and Roush-Yates powerplants that have respectively pushed Hendrick Motorsports and Team Penske to the top of the pecking order.

Last Sunday at Michigan, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin claimed that his TRD engine was down 50 horsepower after he finished seventh in the Pure Michigan 400. Three of the Top-5 finishers, including winner Jeff Gordon, had Hendrick motors; a fourth Top-5 finisher, Team Penske’s Joey Logano in third, had a Roush-Yates motor.

Today, TRD president David Wilson denied that his organization’s engines were as down on horsepower as Hamlin alleged. But he admitted that the company has a gap to close, and is working hard to do that.

“Ultimately, we are bringing more performance,” Wilson said according to the Sporting News’ Bob Pockrass. “We’re not down 50 horsepower, I guarantee you that.

“But we also recognize we need to be better and have been very, very candid and open that we’re continuing to work to make sure when we get to the Chase, we’re more competitive.”

With three regular season races remaining, four Toyota drivers are currently on the Chase Grid with two of them, JGR’s Hamlin and Kyle Busch, having clinched berths.

Their teammate, Matt Kenseth, and Clint Bowyer of TRD-powered Michael Waltrip Racing currently occupy two of the four Grid positions that are still up for grabs.

JGR in particular appears in good shape to have all three of its drivers make the Chase as Kenseth has a sizable points cushion in his favor.

But it still bears noting that Kenseth has gone winless in 2014 after taking seven checkered flags last year. Busch’s win total has also dropped, from four in 2013 to a lone win in 2014 at Fontana.

If Toyota’s going to stand a chance to win this year’s Sprint Cup championship, TRD needs to solve its power woes. JGR’s owner, Joe Gibbs, is counting on them.

“We’ve got some good updates coming in the motor, and so hopefully we get hot at the right time,” Gibbs told Pockrass. “We’ve been behind.”

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INDIANAPOLIS — The first Indy 500 victory for Josef Newgarden also was the richest in race history from a record 2023 purse of just more than $17 million.

The two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion, who continued his celebration Monday morning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway earned $3.666 million for winning the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

The purse and winner’s share both are the largest in the history of the Indianapolis 500.

It’s the second consecutive year that the Indy 500 purse set a record after the 2022 Indy 500 became the first to crack the $16 million mark (nearly doubling the 2021 purse that offered a purse of $8,854,565 after a crowd limited to 135,000 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

The average payout for IndyCar drivers was $500,600 (exceeding last year’s average of $485,000).

Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske, whose team also fields Newgarden’s No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet, had made raising purses a priority since buying the track in 2020. But Penske but was unable to post big money purses until the race returned to full capacity grandstands last year.

The largest Indy 500 purse before this year was $14.4 million for the 2008 Indy 500 won by Scott Dixon (whose share was $2,988,065). Ericsson’s haul made him the second Indy 500 winner to top $3 million (2009 winner Helio Castroneves won $3,048,005.

Runner-up Marcus Ericsson won $1.043 million after falling short by 0.0974 seconds in the fourth-closest finish in Indy 500 history.

The 107th Indy 500 drew a crowd of at least 330,000 that was the largest since the sellout for the 100th running in 2016, and the second-largest in more than two decades, according to track officials.

“This is the greatest race in the world, and it was an especially monumental Month of May featuring packed grandstands and intense on-track action,” Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles said in a release. “Now, we have the best end card possible for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500: a record-breaking purse for the history books.”

Benjamin Pedersen was named the Indy 500 rookie of the year, earning a $50,000 bonus.

The race’s purse is determined through contingency and special awards from IMS and IndyCar. The awards were presented Monday night in the annual Indy 500 Victory Celebration at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis.

The payouts for the 107th Indy 500:

1. Josef Newgarden, $3,666,000
2. Marcus Ericsson, $1,043,000
3. Santino Ferrucci, $481,800
4. Alex Palou, $801,500
5. Alexander Rossi, $574,000
6. Scott Dixon, $582,000
7. Takuma Sato, $217,300
8. Conor Daly, $512,000
9. Colton Herta, $506,500
10. Rinus VeeKay, $556,500
11. Ryan Hunter‐Reay, $145,500
12. Callum Ilott, $495,500
13. Devlin DeFrancesco, $482,000
14. Scott McLaughlin, $485,000
15. Helio Castroneves, $481,500
16. Tony Kanaan, $105,000
17. Marco Andretti, $102,000
18. Jack Harvey, $472,000
19. Christian Lundgaard, $467,500
20. Ed Carpenter, $102,000
21. Benjamin Pedersen (R), $215,300
22. Graham Rahal, $565,500*
23. Will Power, $488,000
24. Pato O’Ward, $516,500
25. Simon Pagenaud, $465,500
26. Agustín Canapino (R), $156,300
27. Felix Rosenqvist, $278,300
28. Kyle Kirkwood, $465,500
29. David Malukas, $462,000
30. Romain Grosjean, $462,000
31. Sting Ray Robb (R), $463,000
32. RC Enerson (R), $103,000
33. Katherine Legge, $102,000

*–Broken down between two teams, $460,000 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, $105,500 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports