Toyota: "Can’t Buy a Win"

Toyota: "Can’t Buy a Win"

Toyota may be No. 1 in global sales, but it can’t even win in NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Series.

Toyota exuberantly became the first foreign brand to compete NASCAR since the 1950s. It was thought with Toyota’s “open wallet” the Japanese automaker would “buy its way into victory lane,” writes The New York Times today.

But that hasn’t happened 11 races into the 36-race season. None of Toyota’s contingent of seven drivers on three teams locked into the top 35 in points and thus guaranteed a starting spot in the 43-car field each week. "Toyota cannot even buy its way into a race,” writes The New York Times.

Jim Aust, president and chief executive of Toyota Racing Development, told the newspaper in an interview last weekend: “I think that over all we would have thought that things would have been better than where we are at this particular stage.”

Toyota is supplying an upgraded engine for its teams this coming holiday weekend of racing, in hopes of securing a spot on the starting grid instead of going home after failing to qualify, as many Toyota drivers have done this season.

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.