By Jerry Jordan, Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – When the green flag falls to start the 2025 NASCAR Daytona 500, it will mark the first time in the history of the race that a Toyota will lead the field to the green.
Chase Briscoe, driving in his first year at Joe Gibbs Racing, did what no other Toyota driver before him could do in accomplishing the task. His lap time of 49.249 seconds equated to a speed of 182.745 mph and was .076 seconds faster than Austin Cindric, who will start on the outside of Row 1.
“A great way to start our season. Unbelievable way to start off the year. Unbelievable way to start off with Toyota. To be able to be the guy to deliver them the first anything when they’ve already accomplished so much is pretty cool,” Briscoe said. “Man, to think I’m going to start on the front row or on the pole of the great American race with ultimately the great American brand of Bass Pro Shops is unbelievable.
“Can’t thank Coach Gibbs enough, the entire Joe Gibbs Racing organization. The whole off-season everybody kept telling me the focus was trying to qualify better at superspeedways. That’s something I really struggled at last year. For our 19 group to come here and sit on the pole at the biggest race of the year is pretty special.”
Aside from the historical aspect, Toyota’s pole win came on the same night as its official rebrand event and officially introduced motorsports journalists to Toyota Gazoo Racing. For 20 years, the racing division in America has been known as Toyota Racing but the new branding brings it under the global initiative.
“Just kind of a season kickoff,” said Paul Doleshal, General Manager Motorsports and Assets for Toyota Motors North America. “It’s our first year with Toyota Gazoo Racing in NASCAR. So, we wanted to get an opportunity for whoever wanted to come up with media from the NASCAR media to come out and just hear a little bit about it.
“For us, it’s just getting finally, everything transferred over. We transferred a couple of years ago to Toyota Gazoo Racing North America with NHRA … For all of our professional racing, we just decided to make the switch. We’ve been monitoring the reception of Toyota Gazoo Racing within North America for about 10 years now. And you know, it started out with different impressions of what the name meant and or what they saw visually when they heard the name and we’ve seen it change and transfer over the last few years, especially to just mean an ‘exciting a real performance brand.’”
Doleshal said that Toyota has made a significant investment not only in motorsports but in America with over 300,000 employees, numerous factories strategically placed around the country – one of those being in San Antonio, Texas and another in Georgetown, Kentucky. Those are just two but most recently, Toyota invested $15 billion into a battery plant in Liberty, N.C.
He said Toyota’s philosophy is to provide drivers with options. For example, Toyota has developed hybrid vehicles for years, first introducing the Prius. That was an addition to their traditional internal combustion vehicles and they also have a hydrogen-powered vehicle in the Mirai.
“I think, as Akio Toyoda has said many times, we should not make the decision for the consumer. We should have options for the consumer to choose from, whatever fits their lifestyle and how they need to use that vehicle and we need to have a breadth of everything. We need to have power for towing trailers. We need to have fuel mileage for the commuter. We need to have a full-bed vehicle for that person who maybe, stays more local. And then you have hydrogen for those that are more cutting edge but want the best of both worlds, a little less range anxiety but they are burning clean with just water coming out of the tailpipe, so that’s just a different approach, right? Rather than dictate to the market, we want the market to dictate to us what they want to drive.”
Of course, Toyota also has a racing simulator, something Doleshal tried out after most of the media had left the event Wednesday night. Racing against team owner and former racecar driver, Sam Hunt, his performance wasn’t quite as good as that of Brisco’s.
Asked if Doleshal’s contributions from his SIM time helped a Toyota driver get the pole, Tyler Gibbs, president of Toyota Racin Development, joked that they take data from both of them and file it in the correct receptacle.
“Yeah, Paul and I are very similar,” Gibbs said. “The more we get close to the car, the more nervous the engineers get. We just stand back and we praise Paul for what a great job he did, and we immediately threw that in the trash (laughing), as I would expect him to do with me if I was on the SIM.”
Gibbs did say that news of Briscoe sitting on the pole for the Daytona 500 did not go unnoticed by corporate leaders back in Japan. He said it was an great way to start the NASCAR season.
“Yes, certainly for us, changing branding has been really – it’s an honor for us,” Gibbs explained. “When you look at what GAZOO Racing means across the globe with the WEC (World Endurance Championship) program and the success they’ve had, the WRC (World Rally Championship), the Dakar program; and for us to be part of that family, we’ve always been a part of it from a technical perspective but now to be racing under that banner is really an honor for us and a great call for us.
“To go out and set our first pole at the Daytona 500 is a great way to start that. A lot of excitement across the company for that. They all understand the Daytona 500, so we’ve got a lot of work still left to do.”