TOMMI MAKINEN
Team principal, Toyota Gazoo Racing WRC Team
There was a lot of speculation that your car would struggle first time out, how do you feel now? “I am happy. We all put in so much work, a massive amount of work. It’s been an incredible year and a half – we had literally nothing a year and a half ago.”
Are you surprised at the speed of the car? “There was a big question mark and yes, I was a little bit surprised. It was very nice to see the speed was there. But I had driven the car a lot myself and I knew we were close, I was confident we had made a good car and I could see this from the reaction from Juho [Hanninen].” Did you give the drivers any instructions? “No. I told them they could drive the rally as they wanted. It was their rally.”
You’ve won this event four times, you could offer them some advice? “I told them they would not finish if they went flat-out from the start. For sure, if you drive at this speed then you will not get all the way through a Monte Carlo with as much snow and ice as this. I definitely had this conversation with Jari-matti!”
How did being a team principal compare to driving yourself? “The nerves were nearly the same, but it’s very difficult as a driver. You go from the service park where you have everybody around you and then you go out and you are alone with the co-driver.” Do you think your approach to the test programme helped with this result? “Definitely. We had three test programmes running all of the time. We had a car in the forests [in Finland] every other day and we had a base in Vic [Spain] and in Portugal. Instead of moving the vehicles about, we moved the people, flying people in and out to make sure we kept on testing. When we needed parts, we used DHL and flew them in for the next day. If we had tried to move the vehicles about, we wouldn’t have managed to do half the number of kilometres we did.”
Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda is a big fan of the programme, what’s his reaction been like? “He is very pleased. He couldn’t make it here, he is so busy, but it’s incredible, from Japan he has been following our progress on Facebook and sharing the photographs and everything.”