Toyota Says NASCAR Cup Engine Issues Are Resolved

Engine failures are unusual in today’s NASCAR Cup Series, but heading into the two-week break, TRD had experienced four of them in Toyotas driven by three different Joe Gibbs Racing drivers.

TRD General Manager Tyler Gibbs, who will assume the organization’s presidency when David Wilson retires late this year, said they had examined each engine individually.

“We know what caused them so from that perspective we are comfortable, as comfortable as you can be with some of the components involved with solving those problems,” Gibbs said. “The problems were similar, but they were caused by different things. There were a couple of different issues associated with that. Denny’s (Hamlin) was the only one that was very, very different.”

Gibbs declined to be specific about the causes for the engine failures in Hamlin’s, Christopher Bell’s and Ty Gibbs’ Toyotas, but he said none of them were caused by a missed shift.

“It was a couple of mechanical things, a couple of other factors involved, but not an over-rev or anything like that,” Tyler Gibbs said.

Bell said he “definitely” wasn’t going to worry about the engine in his Toyota.

“That’s not my department,” Bell said. “You know, it obviously sucks to have issues like that, but it sucks for them. It probably sucks for them (Toyota) worse than it sucks for me. I trust them wholeheartedly … but sometimes mechanical failures are just mechanical failures.”