Dale Jarrett, who made his name in Fords, confirmed Saturday that he will join Toyota’s entry into NASCAR next year.
The agreement, announced before the start of Saturday night’s Dodge Charger 500, is with Michael Waltrip Racing, one of Toyota’s three start-up teams for 2007.
Greg Biffle held off Jeff Gordon to win Saturday night’s race for his first Nextel Cup victory of the season. Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. filled out the top five.
Two of Jarrett’s three Daytona 500 victories, and his 1999 NASCAR season championship, came in Fords fielded by Robert Yates Racing, the team he’s leaving after a dozen years and 29 of his 32 career victories.
Jarrett, 49, will finish out this season with RYR. After that, he indicated, he will drive for two more years as Waltrip’s teammate, then continue to work with Toyota either as a team owner or in a management role with Waltrip.
The open-ended deal to phase out of driving “is something I really wanted to do right at the end of my career,” Jarrett said.
Garage-area speculation put Jarrett’s total package at up to $22 million, much of it coming in incentives after his driving career is over.
Doug Yates, who manages RYR for his father, said the Ford team had matched Jarrett’s initial offer from Waltrip and Toyota, but that Toyota then “made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
Jarrett is the first major name to jump, amid an undercurrent of anxiety among Detroit manufacturers and their NASCAR teams about how the Japanese manufacturing giant might change stock car racing, especially by driving up costs.
“Toyota is going to have its work cut out for them competing in Nextel Cup, no matter how much they plan on spending,” Ford’s director of racing technology Dan Davis said. “Our plan is to keep winning races and championships.”
Yates is ready to move on,
“We’re sad to see Dale gone, but he has to take care of his business, and we have to take care of our business,” he said.
Waltrip said he broached the idea to Jarrett last December.
“I wanted to start a team in ’07, and Dale’s deal was up in ’07,” Waltrip said. “I said, `I want to just put this on your radar screen and let you know that we’re going to come calling.'”
Jarrett won his first Cup race in a Ford with the Wood Brothers team in 1991, then won three races in Chevrolets–including his first Daytona 500 in 1993–with Joe Gibbs Racing.
Since then, all of Jarrett’s success has come with Yates.
“Robert Yates has done everything he possibly could to put a winning race car under me for 12 years,” Jarrett said. “Have there been times that weren’t as good as others? Sure. We all have that. But those years from ’96 through 2002 [were] as good as it gets.”
The major sponsor for Jarrett and Yates in recent years has been UPS, for which Jarrett has made a series of television commercials based on humorous attempts to convince him to “drive the truck” in races.
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ehinton@tribune.com
