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welve months ago, Tommi Makinen took a deep breath and dived in. He had no idea what to expect. Nobody did. The 2017 World Rally Car was a voyage of discovery. But if you really wanted a journey into the unknown, take the bus bound for Makinen’s base in Puuppola, southern Finland.
The Yaris WRC – that’s the Finnishbuilt one, not Toyota Motorsport’s German-crafted aborted version – had tested for the first time just eight months before it would be crossing the start ramp in Monaco. Six weeks before the start of the season, Volkswagen refugee and World Rally champion Sebastien Ogier drove the Yaris WRC with a view to signing for Toyota in 2017. After a day on asphalt and gravel, Ogier stepped out of the car, thanked the team very much for the time. And ran a mile.
Andreas Mikkelsen was the man expected to take the seat, but in the end it was Jari-matti Latvala who signed. Latvala has likely never been more grateful for the contacts and commercial clout of his legendary Finnish manager, Timo Jouhki.
The ironic part of those dealings was the feeling of ‘any port in a storm’ that accompanied them. Both Mikkelsen and Latvala had a Volkswagen deal for 2017 and both had spent the 2016 season honing the next generation of Polo R WRC. It was a car both happily described at the time as the best thing they’d ever sat in.
And now they were fighting over a thrown-together car that had been the laughing stock of the service park for much of the previous season.
Through early 2015, Toyota’s various departments tied themselves up in knots trying to explain how and why its own motorsport division, the Colognebased TMG – a place with more motosport tech than most Formula 1 facilities – had been overlooked for the place Tommi used to make and sell Group N Subarus in Finland.
To the wider world, it made no sense. And the media – particularly the Finns – wasted no time in jumping aboard this story and tearing Makinen to shreds. Repeatedly and often. Late into 2016, there were still those questioning whether the car would make Monte. Or the rest of the season.
Now, he can laugh. At the time though, it wasn’t funny.
“It’s the normal way for people to say these things,” he says, somewhat charitably. “We knew pretty well where we were. Of course, we couldn’t tell exactly the level, but our experience was enough to tell us that we couldn’t be completely lost.”
Still stories remain about Makinen’s – how to put this nicely? – authoritative management style. Every now and then somebody departs with a tale to tell, but it’s hard to reconcile a reportedly difficult atmosphere with the results and the success Tommi’s team achieved in its debut season.
Let’s face it, pre-season, Toyota was favourite for the wooden spoon. But then there was a podium in Monte and a win, yes a win, in Sweden. And it was a win taken on merit.
The Yaris was fast; look at first Latvala’s and then ultimately Esapekka Lappi’s dominance of Rally Finland – where the fast have to be very fast – for evidence of this. But it’s been fragile; Latvala’s retirement from Finland is testament to this.
Makinen acknowledges the frailties, but is quick to point to places like the outsourced components, such as the ECU which went wrong in Finland.
He says: “All the troubles we had were coming from somewhere else. Somewhere we couldn’t control. We are using the best, highest-quality ECU which failed, we couldn’t do anything. Basically, we haven’t got any major mechanical questions and there are no mechanical issues [with anything] which we designed and built. Our guys have done absolutely brilliant work to make the car strong enough.”
Makinen might have won four world titles as a driver, but not even his experience of the WRC’S stages is enough to shortcut running time in a new car. The polar opposite of this eight-monthbuildperiodisvolkswagen, which spent 18 months preparing its first ever World Rally Car. That included time at some of the most extreme venues, such as the high altitude and hard-baked roads of Mexico. Well ahead of the homologation process, the Germans lived in Leon for a while and tailored the Polo to get the best out of the thin air and rough roads.
Toyota didn’t do that. With that in mind, it came as little surprise to hear both Latvala and team-mate Juho Hanninen talking of high water and engine temperatures in the first stage proper in Mexico. The car’s anti-lag systems were turned down, a safe spot located and the Toyotas trundled home (admittedly, Hanninen was suffering temperature issues of his own).
A trip to Toyota City, Japan, on the way back from Rally Australia in November should have fixed that problem.
“Toyota has incredible facilities,” says Makinen, “and we could drive the rally car on the dyno as a complete car. We were able to simulate up to 4000 metres of altitude and in different temperatures. Japan is helping us. We have learned a lot this year, but this kind of thing does definitely help.”
Given the level of technical input required to get a latest generation World Rally Car up and running, there are those in the know who genuinely questioned how some areas were completed. Makinen lets us into a secret. The answer’s on the bonnet. And the doors.
“Microsoft,” he says. “They made the simulation quicker for us, but to do this we needed the massive capacity Microsoft has. Normally some parts would take 24 hours of running for us to [gauge] performance and reliability, but with the outside help we could drop that down to 30 minutes. That made the whole operation so much faster.
“Rallying is very difficult for designers. If you optimise everything, it’s so difficult – you need to have a big amount of experience; you never know which way the impact is coming from and when it comes, is it hard or soft? What does it destroy and what is the place on the car?
“The design of the car has to be so that if you have a massive impact then the damage comes in the right place so it doesn’t disturb you too much.”
Makinen is unique among his peers in