Overclocker

The head of Toyota's luckless F1 effort, Tsutomu Tomita, is resigning, the company has announced.


Toyota's number 12 Formula 1 racer, helmed by Italian Jarno Trulli, at the Malaysian Grand Prix earlier this year.

Date posted: 04-26-2007

LONDON — Toyota Motorsport Vice Chairman Tadashi Yamashina will take the reins of Toyota's Formula 1 effort from current chief Tsutomu Tomita, the company has announced.

Tomita plans to leave the team at the end of June and will move to another, as yet unnamed, post within the Toyota corporate structure. He had offered a public apology at the end of the 2006 racing season when the Toyota F1 effort failed to notch a victory. Toyota is the best-funded team in F1 and has run through hundreds of millions of dollars in a fruitless search for victory since its entry into F1 in 2002.

Tomita said, "In fact the detailed preparation for entry into Formula 1 started more than four years before we entered our first race. I would like to thank all of those involved in Toyota, F1, at our sponsors and of course at Toyota Motorsport who have welcomed, helped and encouraged me as I have faced this challenge."

New team executive Yamashina faces a substantial challenge, as the Toyota F1 program has been plagued with problems from the start, including high-profile dismissals of drivers and designers, charges of industrial espionage and the much-debated departure last year of team technical chief Mike Gasgoyne. Micromanagement by corporate executives in Japan has been blamed for the misadventures.

So far this season, the Williams team has been running quicker with its own chassis and a custom Toyota V8 than the factory Toyota F1 combination.

What this means to you: No racing team in F1 history has ever spent so much and achieved so little as the Toyota effort.

Source: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...cleId=120563#2

spwolf

lol... Edmund's on the roll again.

- Williams is not quicker and they certainly dont have "custom" engine.
- Toyota is first manufacturer in last 15 years to start from scratch.

But yes, they need better results, although there are 4 other teams at least that have same budgets as Toyota.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

I don't follow F1 but what is Toyota's best finish and what do you guys think are the reason Toyota hasn't had a win yet? Of course drivers are a big factor!

Mr Johnson

Drivers are a factor but they really aren't that big a factor. I would put them close to last in the food chain.

They have struggled in pretty much all areas. They started out with a self proclaimed top notch aero person who doesn't seem to understand the mechanical grip side of things. Their engine program was surprisingly weak initially and they were burdened with running on inferior Bridgestone rubber during the tire war days.

They fired their aero guy and replaced him with a Japanese engineer who apparently isn't very good at aero. The engines were de-tuned for this year to 19K RPM so their engine is competitive but they are still lost on the mechanical grip side of things. Long story short... the "customer" engine Williams team has better aero and mechanical grip and is outrunning the factory team.

Toyota should improve as they have better wind tunnel capabilities than Williams and they have more engineers focusing on updates to the car as well. If they get a couple of competent people working on the problems they can move up pretty nicely. This is where Tomita came into play, IMO. He didn't manage the internal disagreements about where the performance deficiencies were correctly and the bureaucracy slowed the team down.

F1 is more of an art at times than just pure engineering. The people with the gut feel for why things are wrong or what will work coupled with raw engineering talent are the difference makers.

United #10

I think Toyota is still a long way to catch up FERRARI or Benz.

Mr. Jones

yeah cause Benz builds a car

my_shaldan

iTrader: (4)

the current drivers for Toyota in my opinion are top notch. I consider Jarno Trulli a better driver than Fernando Alonzo(current champion) in a sense that is has more to do with the equipment than the talent of the driver.

toyota almost won a race 2 years ago during a wet race in europe. Ralph Schumacher was leading when he stupidly changes his tires from wet to slick gambling that the weather would clear. unfortunately, he spun 10 laps to go giving the win to Alonzo.

so far, they have 2 second place finishes, 5 third places and 2 pole positions if im correct. one time, they got 2nd and 3rd in Bahrain 2 years ago.

they need to win soon.
Toyota Excecutives are just waiting for a win to time it to the lauch of the supercar.

TRDFantasy

A few things:

- Edmunds, as usual, gets some facts wrong. Toyota is NOT the best-funded team. For this season, as well as last season the best funded team has been McLaren-Mercedes, not Toyota.

- Williams at the moment is not faster than Toyota. Edmunds should actually do some research and proper journalism. Anyone can go look at the lap times for the Bahrain GP, and you will see Jarno Trulli's Toyota had faster lap times than both Williams cars. Even Ralf Schumacher, who had several problems with his car, had lap times close to the Williams machines. And last time I checked, Toyota had scored more points so far than Williams.

- Even if you have a fast car, that's only half the battle. You also need it to be reliable to get to the end of the race.

Some of you have to keep in mind that Toyota is still a very young team. In fact, with the exception of Super Aguri, Toyota is the youngest team on the F1 grid. And Super Aguri doesn't even deserve that much credit, because they are simply using last year's Honda RA106 machine, slightly modified. Toyota could have entered into F1 the easy way, but they did not. Toyota started it's own team from scratch, as well as built it's own engine and chassis from scratch. Toyota could have followed in the footsteps of other teams like Renault who bought up Benetton, BMW who bought the Sauber team, or Honda who bought the BAR team. Renault, BMW, Honda ... none of these teams started from scratch, they all bought up other teams (Honda did start from scratch in the 1960s in F1, but they quickly left the sport).

I would disagree. Since they entered the sport, Toyota has had one of the most reliable engines on the grid (with the exception of last season), which has also provided competititve performance. You need not just a powerful engine, but a reliable one too.

Toyota started out on Michelin tires, not Bridgestone. Toyota during their 2005 season got pretty good because they had some experience with the Michelin tires, and then in 2006 they switched from a V10 to a V8, and switched to Bridgestones. Lack of experience was the one main reason why the struggled last year.

This year's car has overall good balance, and good mechanical grip. The main area Toyota needs to improve is aerodynamics, and they are quickly learning and getting more experience in that area.

Toyota was steadily improving up until last season. With the design of the 2006 car, Mike Gascoyne compromised the reliability of the car for performance, which is why Toyota had a whole bunch of reliability problems last year. He also angered the team which is why he left. Toyota got angry and frustrated that he had compromised reliability. This included telling the engine department to make thinner cylinder walls on the engine to make it lighter.

It can be summed up in one word really: experience.

Williams for example has decades of experience in F1. Renault (Benetton) also has decades of F1 experience. Honda has decades of F1 experience. McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari all have decades of F1 experience. BMW has lots of F1 experience.

Toyota's best finish was in the 2005 season; it was 2nd place.

F1 is a very tough sport; it's the toughest and most prestigious motorsport in the world. Coming into the sport and starting completely from scratch like Toyota did ... you're not going to do well. Toyota just needs more experience, and they will gradually get better.

spwolf

Toyota had good start of season last year that was ruined at the end.

This year they did poorly at tests, which is why everyone assumed that Williams is faster... but that has been proven wrong in actual races.

Currently, Toyota are 4th quickest team - after Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes and BMW-Sauber, and faster than Renault, Williams, Red Bull and Honda.

If anything, they should write about Honda, which is currently slowest team on the grid, after Spyker. This season has been complete disaster for Honda.

TRDFantasy

It's funny that nobody is even criticizing Honda right now, as their season is a disaster. The team can't even agree what is wrong with the car!

And people did not even mention McLaren-Mercedes and their season last year, where they did not even get a single win.

F1Driver

Nicely explained, TRDFantasy.

carenthus

I believe Toyota has been running on Michelin tires since the beginning. It was last year 2006 that they switch to Bridgestone tires in anticipation of the one tire supplier rule. This year is their second year on Bridgestone tires.

MR_F1

Excellent post TRD.... took everything I had to comment on right out of my mouth. Could not have said it better myself.

One thing though, about Mr. Mike Gascoyne... The fact that they have a lighter engine now, is one of their main advantages, besides it being fuel efficient. we can thank him for that......... not gonna forgive him for the disaster that was 2006 though.

I dunno why all the criticizim toward Toyota.... hell, Jaguar took a winning F1 team and achieved less than Toyota did in practically the same amount of time.

TRDFantasy

Thanks . Even though there is an engine freeze, Toyota did modify what was allowed by the FIA in the 2006 engine to increase reliability for 2007. Toyota also put a lot of cooling, at the small cost of aerodynamic efficiency to guarantee that engine would remain reliable in race conditions.

It's ironic though; Gascoyne is highly respected in F1, and a lot of critics continue to say that Toyota needs some big name experts on their team. Guess what, Gascoyne was one of those so-called "experts", and thanks to him Toyota experienced a disastrous 2006 season.

I think Toyota wants to do F1 every step of the way the hard way. That is to say, instead of hiring big name experts or buying out other teams, they want to learn everything themselves, and achieve success on their own terms and merit. That means it will take longer for them to achieve success, but speaking in the long term, Toyota will greatly benefit from having knowledge and experience themselves, instead of relying on hiring people from other teams.

MR_F1

^^ That is why they get my respect even after season behind season of disappointment. When the victory finally does come it will be all the more sweeter.

The trick is TRD, they knew about the engine freeze, so they designed it with those parameters in mind as well...for operation at, and under 19,000 RPM