I keep seeing that TRD effectively has “factory teams” and I wonder how folks define that. JGR and 23XI seem largely dependent upon significant corporate sponsorships to fund their facing programs - FedEx, Mars, McDonald’s, Bass Pro Shops, Monster. Before Next Gen, JGR built chassis themselves. Factory-built engines are provided from Costa Mesa and TRD also provides engineering support from Salisbury - setup, simulation, etc. Ford and GM have similar engineering facilities of their own.
Toyota certainly have a large presence at the grassroots level and up through Trucks, where KBM is admittedly a heavily factory-funded program that runs many of TRD’s own development prospects, complete with Toyota B2B sponsorship. From there on, teams seem to have have much more autonomy -
@Allenbaba has stated numerous times that JGR and TRD have gone toe-to-toe on a number of issues and JGR ultimately has final say, sometimes in opposition to TRD. Driver lineups ultimately are JGR decisions.
At most, TRD looks to be in a factory support/semi-factory role here, not a full-fledged factory program where they fund most - if not all - of the team and have complete unquestionable authority.