The first potential ToMoCo slight of the day involved the NASCAR.com website, but the second's coming directly from NASCAR officials track-side. Michael Waltrip's being accused of potentially using "an undetermined substance in the intake manifold" of his bright and shiny new Toyota by officials during normal inspections before qualifying runs today. NASCAR officials then confiscated the manifold, causing "widespread speculation among rival teams in the garage area that Waltrip's team could put an illegal fuel additive in its manifold to increase engine combustion." After the qualifying race, officials confiscated the entire car for an indeterminate period of time while the manifold's going back to NASCAR's testing labs to determine if the substance was merely an oil leak or part of some "potential cheating scandal." I remember when Dodge first re-entered NASCAR with the "Intrepid" in 2000, similar concerns of potential tampering of engines and use of additives were levied against the teams. The only difference was Dodge drivers were finishing 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th in qualifying runs — not 15th, 16th, 18th, 39th...
Toyotas underwhelming in Daytona pole qualifying [MSNBC]
UPDATE: Fox Sports is reporting that NASCAR's also disallowed the times of both the No. 9 car of Kasey Kahne and the No. 17 car of Matt Kenseth for apparently unrelated reasons. Man, even when this stuff's scandalous it's never salacious. I mean, it's always for little stuff like the shape of a rear window — the kind of thing that's about as interesting as checking the length of laces on a lacrosse stick.
Related:
NASCAR Web Site Refuses To Let Go Of American Automotive Hegemony, Excludes Toyota From Leaderboard; We're Not Going To Live-Blog Daytona 500 Pole Qualifying [internal]