Asian Motor Sports

JTG-Daugherty Racing announced it has chosen to field Toyotas in 2009, after forming a technical alliance with Michael Waltrip Racing and Toyota Racing Development.

The JTG-Daugherty #47 Toyota Camry will maintain its current primary sponsors, Kingsford Charcoal, CloroxLaundry and Household Products, and Little Debbie’s Snack Cakes.

The new alliance will see JTG-Daugherty moving its Sprint Cup operation into MWR’s 140,000-square foot facility, and receive cars, engineering, mechanical and other technical support from MWR.

Frank Kerr has been named crew chief of the Marcos Ambrose #47 Camry.

“We are extremely excited that Toyota chose to support us as we move to the Sprint Cup Series,” said co-owner Tad Geschickter commented, Their engineering expertise and commitment to excellence is sure to expedite our development into a competitive Cup team.”

“The alliance with Tad, Jodi and Brad happened because MWR has shown over the past few months that we can field a competitive product,” Waltrip said. This allows MWR to maintain the economies of scale we currently enjoy as a three-car team. We continue to invest in our development and this alliance helps keep the momentum we’ve gained in our fabrication and engineering departments this summer.

“We wanted to help Tad and Brad in their transition into NASCAR Sprint Cup ownership. If anyone can identify the hidden demons of a start-up team it is me. Having JTG-Daugherty operating in our shop helps our NAPA Toyota and our Aaron’s Toyota with David Reutimann. So this is one of the classic examples of win-win-win for everyone involved, most importantly JTG-Daugherty and MWR employees.”

I imagine the Aussie fans of Ambrose that have remained loyal after his switch to NASCAR are spitting-up all over their newspapers and monitors at the news.

Other than Jack Roush no one in the Sprint Cup garage has been as loyal as Ambrose to the Blue Oval, if it weren’t Ford of Australia acting on his behalf Ambrose might still be racing an Aussie V8 Supercar.