Will a Toyota win a race in its first season in Nextel Cup racing in 2007?

Dale Jarrett says that’s not even the right question.

“I don’t think winning one race is the question,” Jarrett said. “I think it’s a question of how many we win. I don’t think there’s any doubt we will win, the question is whether each of the teams will be involved, and I think they will be.”

Jarrett will drive the No. 44 Toyotas for Michael Waltrip Racing this season, one of three multicar operations carrying the manufacturer’s banner into the Cup series after a three-year apprenticeship in the NASCAR Truck Series.

After getting its wobbly legs underneath it in the Trucks, Toyota swept the top six spots in that series’ standings in 2006. While that kind of domination might be the long-range goal in Cup, short-term goals are clearly far more modest.

David Reutimann and driver/owner Waltrip are Jarrett’s teammates, while Dave Blaney has Jeremy Mayfield alongside him at Bill Davis Racing. Team Red Bull will field cars for Brian Vickers and rookie A.J. Allmendinger.

But among those seven teams scheduled to run full-time schedules, only Blaney is guaranteed a starting spot in the season’s first five races because of his points from 2006. Jarrett is protected, too, as the most recent Cup champion who might need a former champion’s provisional, but everyone is working without a net.

“The goal right now is to make sure each car is in each race,” Jarrett said, speaking for the three-car Waltrip team but saying what most certainly applies to all of the Camry fleet. “That’s something we’re going to have to work hard on the first eight to 10 races to make sure to get the cars in the top 35 and keep them there.”

But Jarrett, who with his championship and 32 career victories in 639 Cup starts is the most accomplished of Toyota’s first group of drivers, said he believes that by season’s end someone in a Camry could be a contender for more than just an occasional race win.

Driver Dale Jarrett talks with crew chief Matt Borland during a testing session at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway.

“We can’t guarantee a sponsor we’re going to be in the Chase, but do we have a chance to do that?” he said. “I think that opportunity is there. A good, realistic goal for us is to be in the top 15, and I think we can do that with the people we have.”

Jarrett has Matt Borland, celebrated as one of the sport’s top crew chiefs during his tenure with Ryan Newman, coming over from Penske Racing to lead his team. David Hyder will try to revive Waltrip from the doldrums he suffered in a difficult 2006 season, while Frank Kerr teams up with Reutimann for his move up from the Truck Series.

“If you look at where I was and what I was doing, all that was kind of doing was finishing out my career,” said Jarrett, who completed a 12-year stint at Robert Yates Racing in 2006. “This gives me an opportunity to help a good friend (Waltrip) get something started and be able to be a part of that.”

Davis’ team ran Dodges without manufacturer’s support for the past several seasons, and the results on the track showed it. When Blaney finished fourth at Richmond last September, it was just the team’s second top-five finish in four seasons. Mayfield comes over after leaving Evernham Motorsports in a messy breakup during the 2006 season, looking to join his fresh start with BDR’s.

Team Red Bull, meanwhile, hopes to get started simply by getting Vickers and Allmendinger on the track with consistency.

Vickers, who got his first career Cup victory in October at Talladega before leaving Hendrick Motorsports, said he’s excited about opening this new chapter in his career.

“The way this business is now, you can’t just change jobs and the next week be there,” Vickers said. “It has to be planned well out in advance. You get in the moment and you get real excited about it and then you have to wait six months. It is kind of frustrating. During the offseason I’ve been in the shop at lot more than I had the past couple of years fitting seats and just kind of getting to know everybody. It’s a breath of fresh air. But it has been a lot of work, too.”

Vickers knows that a brand-new team with a brand-new make of car faces what he called a “learning curve.”

“We’d love to go race for wins but that’s not a realistic goal right now,” Vickers said. “We need to focus on building good cars, finishing races and growing the team.”

Vickers’ teammate faces an even stiffer challenge, as Allmendinger moves into a new motorsports discipline with a brand-new operation. He was a star in the Champ Car World Series, but decided to come to stock cars when his contract in that series was up at the end of last season.