Toyota blazed a long, difficult trail to the 2002 CART Manufacturer's Championship. source: CART.com - David Philips Toyota blazed a long, difficult trail to the 2002 CART Manufacturer's Championship. The raw statistics show Toyota competed in 129 Champ Car races over the course of seven seasons before wrapping up its first Manufacturer's Championship two weeks ago in Surfers Paradise. But as is often the case, the statistics only tell a small part of the story. For example, stating that it took more than seven years for Toyota to win the Manufacturer's Championship is grossly misleading. Long before the Toyota RV8A made its competition debut at Homestead Speedway in 1996, Toyota personnel and teams had been hard at work designing, building, testing and developing engines for CART competition from Florida to California to New Hampshire to Shizuoka, Japan. For example, All American Racers - accompanied by TRD personnel--was a regular presence at CART races in 1995, preparing to take to the track for testing in the days following many Champ Car events. And long before those test mules ran in '95, Toyota engineers were hard at work designing and developing their first Champ Car engines using the knowledge and lessons learned during their successful partnership with AAR in IMSA competition in the early '90s.
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