Toyota struggles continue in Sprint Cup

We’re four races in and Toyota hasn’t made it to Victory Lane? Their 0-for-4 performances, thus far highlight some weaknesses at both Joe Gibbs and Michael Waltrip Racing. Combined, Toyotas have just one top-5 finish out of 20 recorded thus far in 2014; only two drivers (Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth) sit inside the top 10 in Cup Series points. That’s a far cry from last year, early in the season when JGR looked to be the fastest team on the circuit.

Toyota’s struggles in Sprint Cup this year have Joe Gibbs wondering what the fix is. What’s the issue? The manufacturer, who had just ten cars in Sunday’s field at Bristol has the lowest number of full-time teams compared to Ford and Chevrolet.

Five of those come from JGRand MWR, exclusively while the other five are a hodgepodge of underfunded operations (two-car Swan Racing, two-car BK Racing and an MWR-Jay Robinson Racing Alliance). Swan and BK, with four rookie drivers on their roster offer limited feedback and are simply trying to finish races. MWR, while using Jay Robinson Racing as a satellite operation is still reeling from its reduction to a two-car program.

That leaves JGR, carrying the banner on an island of sorts when the currentNASCAR trend is to use satellite teams to improve performance (hang on; we’ll get to it). What satellite team can JGR use to fix its problems? At best, they can dip down into the Nationwide Series, running circles around the competition with Kenseth and Kyle Busch while keeping confidence high for Sunday’s big race. But the Nationwide and Cup cars are different animals; there’s only so much you can learn in-house. Frontstretch