One begins to think perhaps not. NASCAR announced today that it is only guaranteeing two spots for Toyota in the season-opener at Daytona. The remaining Toyota entries will have to qualify just like everyone else. And this has some worried.  At Preseason Thunder in Daytona this week, NASCAR.com reports that the Toyotas were posting remarkably lackluster times, proof that the Toyota teams are still far from perfecting the setups on these spanking new machines. Though Daytona is still a month away, one gets the sense that the Toyota teams are concerned about becoming competitive in time. Lee White, senior vice president and general manager of Toyota Racing Development told NASCAR.com that “I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t daunting. I’d be lying if I told you I was confident that those eight cars will even run the race, because only two of them are guaranteed in.” We at Daytona Blue are eager to see TRD fall flat on their face. The primacy of American engineering shall reign supreme!

And a word about the car. It looks like a 1998-vintage Monte Carlo save for the C-pillar!

What do you think about Toyota in NASCAR? Fire away with your comments.