SUPRAS GAINING ON CHAMPIONSHIP Toyota Attacks California Speedway

As one of the big three manufacturers in the championship, Toyota has taken five wins from the 15 races held in the past two seasons.

The Toyota Supra is represented by a number of strong teams. TOM'S, of course, has strong links to the factory, but other squads running the machine include Le Mans, SARD, Kraft, Cerumo and Tsuchiya. In fact, the Le Mans pairing of Juichi Wakisaka and Akira Iida is the most successful over the 2003 and '04 seasons - they took second in the championship in '03 with two wins, and were third this year with no wins, but a trio of second placings.

SARD has also had success. The team's 2003 driver lineup, Dominik Schwager and Manabu Orido, took one win. A switch to Jeremie Dufour and Andre Couto for '04 netted a further victory, plus a superb second in the final standings.

The other winning pair are Yuji Tachikawa and Seiji Ara, who took a victory in the Cerumo Supra this season.

Some measure of the strength of the Toyota attack comes from the fact that, in 2004, five of the top seven driver lineups in the series were driving Supras. Among them were James Courtney and Tatsuya Kataoka from TOM'S, who took an extraordinarily consistent six top-six placings in a row.