Friday, July 29, 2005 3:22 PM
A Drop off in Competitiveness and Luck
Rounds 6 and 7 saw our Panasonic Toyota Racing Team score a mere four points and its first ever DNF tally for the year. The last two weeks have been disappointing, frustrating, and one big wake up call to the reality of how fast things change in Formula 1 – all this considering the team’s excellent start to the season that saw points scored on merit in every race after Melbourne, and even more recently, that brilliant 3-4 finish in Spain just before Monte Carlo.
Let’s first talk about Toyota’s fortunes in general during the last few weeks.
Well Toyota as an organization has been very successful on the profits front yet again, and its cars continue to sell towards even bigger numbers all over the world. That makes any Toyota fan, supporter, admirer, etc. very proud and happy. On the motor sports side, things have been and continue to be disappointing in IRL, while in F1 the team is on a low point and is facing a lot of challenges as the other teams catch on.
How has Toyota been in the IRL? What are the concerns?
Toyota dominated its (and Honda’s) first year in the IRL in 2003 with Scott Dixon winning the championship, and Gil de Ferran winning for Toyota the Indy 500. But beginning last year, things have drastically turned around that Honda now dominates the series. I haven’t been religiously watching IRL races, but results so far show the Toyotas appear to struggle to just even ‘mix it’ with the Hondas, at times even beaten by the sole Chevrolet. It is not clear to me why this is so; Toyota obviously has a lot of catching up to do as it is embarrassing itself there in American racing.
Should this be a concern for a Toyota F1 follower?
It could be - it should be a huge concern because this could be a precedent to the Formula 1 V8 wars next year. It is alarming when in Indianapolis 500 just hours after the dismay in Germany Toyota could manage just two cars in the top 10 (that’s two cars bringing up P9 and P10) with all first eight finishers powered by Hondas. By the way that was Ryan Briscoe finishing tenth, behind two-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves.
I see. Now talk us through about Panasonic Toyota’s low point in F1.
Well first of all I certainly hope this is the lowest it can get and that everything will be on the up from this point. I also thought of that after Monaco, thinking that having gotten over our two worst circuits (Imola and Monaco) the team will be consistently competitive thereafter. The last two races are not just disappointing, they are frustrating because it was evident that the TF105s have improved and deserving of better results. From my point of view I’d say that opportunities were wasted because of blunders from the team and even from the drivers – both drivers.
But for sure luck also played a part in all of this.
That is true, un-luck also contributed, but I think it’s no different from luck playing a part in our previous excellent performances and podium finishes. You can only have so much luck and un-luck and as they say, you create your own luck. In Monaco Ralf was unlucky to be handed the grid penalty and to get tangled with Juan Pablo, but he had the power to limit damage, or to just be plain practical about the situation. Fortunately he performed rather well in the race, managed to overtake some people and in the end score three valuable points for himself and the team. My apologies to Jarno’s fans, but I think Jarno had the worse approach. I just think he held back too much in Q1 and as consequence, he very early on sort of ruined his race. During the race he did a reasonable if not good opening stage that he and team were again within reach of a podium finish. But after the stops he slid down the order by too much – I don’t know if he didn’t push enough in his in/out laps, if the mechanics did a bad stop, or he was just plain unlucky to be down by so much.
That must have been frustrating considering that Renault’s positions were ripe for the picking because of their problems, but it was not Toyota to benefit from them.
Very frustrating – but still, congratulations to Williams, Nick and Mark. They were smart and lucky to have their strategy work well. Their three-stopping cars allowed them to qualify much higher and in the race they were not so bothered about being too heavy. However, I was hoping that by the European GP Toyota would have learned from Williams’ strategy, of their brilliant working around the weakness of their cars.
That overtaking move of Jarno on Giancarlo, wasn’t that exciting?
I agree that that was a brave, heroic move to pass Fisichella. But first of all, all things being the same, if that very same move was done by Ralf Schumacher, I bet he would have been cursed and called idiot or stupid. I felt that there was too much double-standards from fans between Ralf and Jarno in Monaco. It was a shame because Ralf was beginning to show more confidence in the car after Spain. To be honest I feel disappointed that Jarno didn’t score any point from that move – dare I say, he faded. He went to the pits but the team found nothing unusual, i.e. the car was okay. But the car for Jarno was a little imperfect for his liking that he seemed to have psyched himself into thinking that the car was no longer capable of anything better. He did not adapt. Of course, everything would have been a lot easier, and probably a lot better too in terms of points, in the first place had he just waited for the right time.
I’d have to agree with the last statement. But did you see the mechanics react to that breathtaking move?
Yes I did! Such energy and enthusiasm! Such character… and that clearly dispels the notion that the team are bunch of robots, a faceless group of people. Toyota knows how to party too. Again, what a shame that it didn’t work as we all wanted it to be.
The Toyota people were also expecting a lot for the Nurburgring event, but again we were unlucky. How did you find the race?
What a heartbreak for all those people! Anyway, the race itself for me was boring, apart from that last incident with Kimi. There was not much close racing, especially in the context of having just watched Monaco seven days before. Overtaking was difficult, but then again in Monaco, surprisingly there was a lot of action.
Ralf and Jarno had different types of engines there, and it seemed that there was not much difference.
The engineers made all things possible to make the older engine in Ralf’s car as close as possible in specification to Jarno’s new, upgraded one. Here’s some good ‘what if.’ If the team just decided to go for new engines for both cars, then Ralf would have had started from 18th or probably better. He would have had prevented that first lap incident, and both He and Jarno would have been able to maintain their level in terms of engine upgrades. He effectively started 18th anyway because of that incident.
That’s one ‘what if,’ but the more possible ‘what if,’ happened to Jarno. He definitely would have scored a lot better without the grid incident.
Ah, yes. Bitter unluck that added more score to sadly not our championship card but to our experience card. Probably the newer engine had some issues with that starter – what do I know? I wonder though how he ended up so behind the others after his drive through penalty, and more importantly, how difficult it seemed for him to get back to racing towards the top eight. He mentioned that he could have finished on the podium, even on the top step of the podium, but his race pace indicates otherwise. If not for Kimi and Felipe’s misfortunes, he would have scored none at all. And it would have been one royal embarrassment for us in light of BAR’s return and David Coulthard’s admirable run to fourth. Even Fisichella who started from the pits raced excellently towards the front.
Some mystery there, I see. But what about Ralf? He also had difficulty closing in on the leaders.
He had difficulty closing in on even just the midfield. It’s a concern really, and I believe it got into him. First of all it must have annoyed him big time that he was nose-less before the first lap finished. It seemed like he grew impatient and spun-out; when he stepped out of the car it was as if he couldn’t care less that his race is over. He looked too tired to continue. In any case he broke Toyota’s record run of finishing each and every race from the season’s opening in Australia. That’s reliability for you!
But recent reports in different F1 websites harp McLaren’s reliability record.
Yes I’ve seen those, where McLaren is supposed to be number one, then Toyota or Sauber, then Renault. I couldn’t understand: McLaren has had two DNF’s (Imola and Nurburgring) and we only have one so far. And note that our sole retirement was due to the driver’s spinning out (not that we should be too proud of that) while their retirements are both mechanical in nature. We’re still king of reliability.
Reliability continues to be a bright spot, the engine is still one of the best, and the drivers are doing a reasonable enough job for the team. What are Toyota’s concerns then?
Toyota should ensure to keep the good elements and even improve on them along with solving on the weak areas. On the engine side, I somehow am in awe that we just had our very first engine upgrade after six rounds. On the one hand it shows how good the engine is to be competitive against other more constantly improving engines; on the other it also says that we can do even more. Like Mr. Takahashi said, we need to do triple the efforts of our competitors.
For the next race Honda will have their latest engines, and come Indy Cosworth will boost their engines by a whopping 30 horsepower.
That is what I’m talking about. We cannot afford another embarrassment from Red Bull. Of course there’s Honda, and we don’t know the plans of Ferrari, BMW, Renault, and Mercedes as of yet.
Speaking of engines, it looks like a lot of changes will happen next year not only from a change of number of cylinders, but also on who will supply who. Any comments?
My foremost comment is: Toyota should exploit this opportunity to the fullest. Teams like Red Bull, Sauber, and Williams are on shaky grounds right now as regards their engines. There is an element of instability in terms of designing their 2006 cars that goes with that. Toyota is of course building both chassis and engine under one roof and that is an advantage they should build on in light of this transition phase on engines.
What about rumors linking Toyota to Williams, with the possibility of badging the engines as Lexus?
Williams is a direct competitor and we could be better off helping other poorer teams. There will not be a shortage of more willing engine donors to Williams like Honda and Cosworth. And if ever Lexus were to enter Formula 1, I’d rather see them as sponsors to Toyota’s own F1 operations.
It could be a complex situation, but possible. Anyway, another issue that has been going around lately is Toyota’s building a B-spec car. Do you think Toyota needs a B-spec car?
I just know that we need one big upgrade good for at least four tenths faster. We need to leapfrog others with one big push; we have incremental improvements race by race but so do others. They might not need to explicitly label it as a B-car. In 2003 we had a drastically improved car for Silverstone onwards that sported a new engine cover and wind deflectors but we didn’t call it the TF103B. What’s in a name anyway?
Hmm, well I guess last year it added to the feeling that along with the revised B car was the start of better next half of the season.
Yes, all because of the letter B. We all know how much the revised car was an improvement – not much. But I agree it helps in motivating, psyching up people. What we need to improve on right now is the race pace of the car. Ferrari and potentially Williams have better race pace than us right now. We are marginally better in qualifying, for out and out raw pace also partially because Jarno is just so good in qualifying. I think he’s too good for the car in qualifying but in the race it’s impossible to repeat that so it appears that he’s slacking off when he’s not.
The team believes that it has the third best car and is still ahead of Williams and Ferrari.
It could be true, but I have my doubts. The last two races have proved that Williams have improved a lot and I think they really deserve the points they scored, and even more. We cannot go on believing that we have the third best car right now if we can’t score ahead of those supposedly behind us. We can’t go on talking about how the others out qualified and outraced us because they were lighter, because they had different tyres, because they had a different strategy, etc. That would be like the old Toyota situation: we always believed in the potential of the car, but if we can’t show it, there’s nothing much to talk about. There will be a lot to come from Williams and Ferrari in the immediately following races, and even from BAR and Red Bull in the latter part of the season.
So it’s a matter of in the long run, long runs should be improved?
Haha, you’re trying to be funny again but you’re clearly ineffective. Seriously though, we must only realize the promise of extensive development of the car throughout the year, of giving more effort than any other competitor. It’s the perfect opportunity to respond with the realization of the promise: McLaren have jumped us in the championship table, Williams is biting at our rear, and there are at least two other teams itching to get past us. Nick and Ruebens are especially fired up (and potentially free next year.)
Fair enough. Any last comments?
Just the same: Let’s all take it race by race and keep the faith! Watch us, and watch out! And thank you for bearing with my blabber.
