TOYOTA’S FUTURE IN Formula 1 appears in doubt despite claiming a landmark second place finish at the Singapore Grand Prix last weekend.
While mid-season negotiating between the Formula 1 Teams’ Association and FIA resulted in a range of cost-cutting measures for 2010 and beyond, Toyota team boss Tadashi Yamashima has intimated that the reduction in expenses may not be enough.
Yamashima said the continued prohibitive cost of competing in F1 will force Toyota to reconsider its motorsport program, especially in the wake of forecasts suggesting the parent company will suffer a net loss of more than $AU5 billion for 2009.
“We need to turn it into an F1 where you don’t need so much money,” Yamashima said. “We’ll have to consider various issues while bearing in mind our ties with the main company.”
The Japanese outfit is yet to finalise its budget for 2010. It has also notified drivers Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock that their services will not be required for next year.
Yamashima’s comments are a further blow to Formula 1. The pre-season withdrawal of Honda and recently announced departure of BMW would seem to justify the crusade of outgoing FIA President Max Mosley to cut costs.
Mosley has long been an opponent of the increasing infiltration of manufacturer-teams into Formula 1 in favour of the ‘garagistes’, kit-car teams which produce a chassis but source an engine from external suppliers.
While Mosley has been derided within the F1 paddock as a doomsayer, the developments in recent months would appear to have given credence to the Briton’s warnings over the threat escalating costs pose t0 the future of the sport.
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I guess with the Sauber team getting the reserve spot for next year, the loss of Toyota wouldn’t mean that much to F1. I mean, sure they have pumped a colossal amount of money into F1, but haven’t had any real success with it, and F1 isn’t really any better for having Toyota. F1 makes sense for manufacturers if they are getting good marketing return from it, but that will depend on how successful you are. There is little to be gained from saying your cars have F1 tech (even if they don’t) when your F1 cars are always at the back of the grid. The involvement of manufacturers in F1 will ebb and flow with the success of the automotive industry, in the meanwhile there are plenty of other teams that want in. When the automotive industry picks back up again, I’d expect to see some manufacturers start knocking on F1’s door again looking for that marketing opportunity.
Who cares about F1 when Toyota only sells white goods anyway? At least rally racing made sense when Toyota still had the Celica. The Toyota brand name is sinking fast, and anything decent gets labelled a Lexus, which doesn’t help.
That’s BS Toyota can easily afford to be in F1, there are so many smaller manufacturers that compete in F1, even Fiat/Ferrari are smaller in terms of market capital than Toyota yet can afford to compete. No the problem here is this “sour grapes”. Toyota F1 should never have been based out of Cologne but in Japan with full Japanese personnel.
Second their drivers are crap, sorry but a good passionate driver is key to a team’s success, not only because they can wring the neck out of a bad car, but a good driver will offer invaluable feedback as to how to improve a car (Shui was a master at this). A lot of fast drivers fall over when it comes to offering feedback to the engineers and this is why you see no improvement.
Thirdly Toyota just hasn’t been successful enough. The biggest auto manufacturer in the world has pulled out of WRC for the same reason, we can’t win and you won’t change the rules to suit us, so we will take our bat and ball and go home.
Gee Toyota can’t even build that V10 Supercar (forgot it’s stupid name) it’s taking them years and years (just to try and equal the GT-R and they still haven’t achieved it. By the time it is realised the game will have moved on again.
Also what true sports cars have Toyota got on sale at the moment to at least try and make any connection to F1? NONE!
In my opinion good riddens Toyota from F1, you never fit into the sport and the sport never needed you anyway. Yamaha built better F1 engines anyway, and I’m sure someone like Nissan could build a better F1 chassis. With the demise of Renault in F1, I’d like to see them back Nissan to enter F1 (doubt that would happen but I bet Nissan with a smaller budget than a Toyota would have a million times more success in F1).
Only reason why Toyota sell so many whitegoods is because the people of this world are becoming more and more boring, pasionless robots just like the Toytota brand.