I think the movie will begin with McQueen winning a Piston Cup, so there are some chance Sally and the rest of Radiator Springs characters appear before Lightning and Mater depart to the Grand Prix.
Don’t worry, you’re not annoying me. I can tell you really love L&S. I’m starting to wonder where Sally is, too. 
You mean winning an additional one, right? So that’d still be some time between the first movie and this one.
I personally think that after The King retired, he gave Lightning McQueen his spot in the Grand Prix. It seems the most likely to me, considering how good terms they are on with each other.
Yeah, I can imagine that being the case.
Even better would be if the gang followed Lightning as his pit crew on their adventures, which I think is equally likely.
Then we’d have an Incredibles/True Lies/Mission Impossible 3 storyline where the lady doesn’t know her man is a secret agent until she unwittingly gets kidnapped by the bad guys and he has to rescue her. 
Or what if the characters show up as a sort of Deus Ex Machina if Lightening and Mater were to be kidnapped by enemy spies, and they helped bust them out (a la Shrek 2)?
Why an additional one? He didn’t get the first.
And yes, maybe your theory about The King is correct, but I still think he’ll win one.
What I originally meant by “winning an additional one” was “actually winning one this time”.
That’s certainly true, about him actually winning a Piston Cup after the events of the Cars film. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason why he got into the Grand Prix is because of helping The King in Cars 1.
Yeah think he didnt get in for winning the piston cup (he did what in his cup!!!) 
but for helping the king.like pixarbuilder said and i just had to say that mater joke about the piston cup hehehe
You hurt your wha?
Yeah, that would make an awesome opening, similar to the first one, kinda like the opening for toy story 3 that was awesome and was a shout out to the openings of ts and ts2
If anyone didn’t notice…
So, I guess at least some of the characters from Radiator Springs are coming along as well. I would assume that includes Sally.
What about Doc Huston returning? Paul Newman died sadly, but if he does return, he may have a new voice actor, just like Slinky did in Toy Story 3. What do you think?
I could have sworn that I read somewhere that [spoil]Doc isn’t returning, and they’re having a plot line about his passing.[/spoil] I don’t remember where, though.
We were discusing that here, i think it was incredigirlvirginia who said that it was better to say that doc passed on
Well, that’s sad. They could have always got a replacement though. Oh well.
That’s odd. The article is old, but we never discussed it before.
Is it weird that now, since I’ve watched an episode of Chuck and am in kind of a “spy drama” mood, I think this looks utterly awesome?
^ Doesn’t sound weird to me, because I’ve always been excited for it.
My dad just made me less mad at him by be super excited for this movie. He’s such a Bond nerd, though, I saw it coming…
TDIT: I mentioned that on page 3, in slightly different terms. 