Toyota has announced a $373.8 million investment in five U.S. manufacturing plants that will support production of its first American-made hybrid powertrain and to implement Toyota’s New Global Architecture at its Alabama plant. Each of the projects is scheduled to begin this year and all should be operational by 2020.

The investments will include adding new production of hybrid transaxles (hybrid vehicle transmissions) at the Buffalo, West Virginia, manufacturing facility; expanding 2.5-liter engine capacity at the Georgetown, Kentucky, plant; increasing production of 2.5-liter cylinder heads at Bodine Aluminum’s Troy, Missouri, plant; and modifying the Bodine Jackson, Tennessee, plant to accommodate production of hybrid transaxle cases and housings and 2.5-liter engine blocks. The Huntsville, Alabama, plant will undergo a comprehensive upgrade to enable it to build engines that complement TNGA.

ACT I: Hurricane Trump

So I set out this past weekend to enjoy some sports -- a little football, a bunch of NASCAR, etc. -- and then Hurricane Trump hit on Friday and turned everything into a political circus.

Now here we are: It’s Tuesday, and all anyone can talk about online and at the water cooler is the stunning comments Trump made about the NFL protesters, how nearly every athlete and team in the country strongly responded against him (including Lebron James calling him a “bum”), and who’s right in this debate.

It’s a lot to unpack, and the reason I’m even talking about it here is that 45 brought NASCAR into the discussion, praising their lack of protests -- and a couple of NASCAR team owners made huge headlines in mainstream media with some pretty outrageous comments that don’t paint the sport in a very good light.

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Rivalries are important ... they're a big part of the reason people watch sports so religiously.

They're also something that seems to be lacking in today's NASCAR. There really hasn't been anything on the level of Petty vs Pearson or Gordon vs. Earnhardt for a long time. On the contrary it seems like most of the top Cup guys go fishing with each other each weekend, which is cool on one hand but also kind of makes Sunday a bit less engaging.

That may be changing though.

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Roush Fenway Racing has a long history of success at Michigan International Speedway, including 13 Cup wins, and a total of 23 wins, 89 top 5s, 148 top 10s in a total of 281 starts across the major NASCAR touring series.

As they return to MIS for this weekend's races, they hope to add to those accolades. In June, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. managed a top-10 finish, and is looking to improve on that this time around.

"After scoring a top-10 finish last time at Michigan, I'm really looking forward to this weekend. Every year we look at Michigan as a track that we want to do well at given Roush Fenway, Jack and Ford's success there in the past. We have been working really hard on our intermediate program, since it makes up a majority of the races in the playoffs. This weekend will give us the chance to evaluate our improvements."

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- As the drivers take to the track at Michigan International Speedway this weekend, there's a bit of drama behind that scenes on the minds of many in the sport.
As is often the case, it involves Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- the biggest name in the sport.

What's unique this time is that it involves a fellow driver being particularly critical of the perennial Most Popular Driver, who is retiring after this season.
It all starts with Kevin Harvick, who said on his radio show this week that since Dale Jr. is most popular driver but not running up front each week or winning regularly, it has limited the growth of the sport:

"I believe that Dale Jr. has had a big part in kind of stunting the growth of NASCAR because he's got these legions of fans and this huge outreach of being able to reach different places that none of us have the possibility to reach, but he's won nine races in 10 years at Hendrick Motorsports and hasn't been able to reach outside of that," Harvick said.

As you can imagine, that didn't go over well among Jr. Nation, who were quick to call Harvick disrepectful (among other colorful terms) and also remind Harvick that he got his start in Cup after the tragedy that befell Earnhardt Sr. at Daytona in 2001.

Earnhardt has responded to the comments, expressing that he was hurt by them, also but staying positive and saying that he still respects Harvick:
"I found some of those comments hurtful," Earnhardt said. "I still respect him as a champion and ambassador for the sport. That's just the way it is, I guess. I hate that's how he feels."