DON’T DO IT LIKE THAT...
The story of Toyota’s failed attempt to conquer Formula 1
“WHAT LET IT DOWN WAS A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING AT THE TOP. TOO MANY PEOPLE WRITING REPORTS SA“YING THAT ‘WE WOULD HAVE WON IF…
As Honda gets set to bow out of F1, again, at the end of 2021, we look back at the exploits of another famous Japanese manufacturer that spent too much money, adapted too slowly, achieved too little, then bowed out too soon in response to global economic rupture
‘IT’S GLOCK’.
For many, these fateful words mark the pinnacle of Toyota’s contribution to Formula 1 between 2002 and 2009. Timo Glock, struggling with dry tyres on a wet track, handing Lewis Hamilton his first world title on the final lap of the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, to the disbelief of race winner Felipe Massa, and the complete disgust of local fans.
In some ways it was ‘peak Toyota’. Although Glock and team-mate Jarno Trulli both finished the race in the points, the team achieved fifth place in the constructors’ championship and the parent company was proclaimed the world’s largest car manufacturer just two months later, the die was cast for an ignominious F1 withdrawal a year later. Any remaining dreams of F1 glory were dashed on the rocks of the 2008 financial crisis.
Team principal Tadashi Yamashina wept during the November 2009 press conference when his boss Akio Toyoda, president of the company and grandson of the founder, announced the team’s immediate withdrawal from F1. Toyoda apologised for Toyota’s failure to win a single race, cited the difficult economic circumstances which had meant the company posted a £2.9billion loss the previous May, and avoided mention of the fact they had signed a new Concorde Agreement just weeks earlier.
It all looked so very different when, in 1999, Toyota announced its intention to enter F1. Toyota Motorsport’s avuncular boss Ove Andersson confirmed that the team would remain located at its traditional hub in Cologne,
Germany, from where it had masterminded seven World Rally Championship titles.
An early visit to the factory showed it to be of a size and scale not previously seen in F1 circles. With corridors wide enough to drive a car through them, the state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities were scaled to facilitate provision of customer rally cars and spare parts. Engine and gearbox manufacturing was done in-house, the race team honed through two years of participation in sportscar racing, and the wind tunnel and chassis rigs were already in situ.
The team’s entry was duly submitted in 2000, with the initial plan being to race in 2001. This was soon shelved, Toyota forfeiting an $11million bond to F1 in the interests of having a full year of testing. Initially the plan was to attend as many races as possible and test the day after. That changed as it became clear the test mule was not competitive but, as Allan Mcnish recalls, the testing programme was not without its merits.
“It allowed a lot of reliability running and to get some fusion among the team personnel,” he recalls. “In the end, the race car had very little in common with the test car apart from the engine.”
Mcnish’s participation came as the result of his involvement in the team’s assault on Le Mans in 1999 where he drove one of three Toyota GT-ONE entries. Out of contract after the race, Mcnish was about to sign for Audi when he received a call from Andersson.
“He asked me if I’d be interested to have a chat about a Formula 1 programme which, to be frank, I had heard about but never considered,”
Mcnish says. “It wasn’t ideal timing for me in terms of age – I was 32 when I hit the first race – and I was very established in sportscars by that point, but this was an opportunity that was never going to come back.”
With team-mate Mika Salo, 35, Toyota’s bosses were clearly aiming for maturity and experience, but Mcnish recalls that in the time between him being signed by Andersson and the start of testing things began to change.
“When I signed Ove was leading the charge and the structure was quite clear, but the closer it got to the first race the less he was leading and the more other people came around him. Generally they were from a non-motorsport background.
“Sometimes it felt like the blind leading the blind. When we started out there was only one engineer on the race team with Formula 1 experience, so when we turned up in Melbourne for the first race it really was the first race in the true sense of the word. There was quite a lot of naivety at the beginning.”
2002 started well enough, Salo finishing in the points in two of the first three races, but it was a false dawn that led Toyota’s management to recalibrate their targets upwards.
“At the beginning we were reasonably competitive but that was because we had been driving the car since November,” admits Mcnish. “Most teams had only had their cars two or three weeks beforehand. With our understanding of the car, and some decent reliability, we had already reached the peak of performance by the time we got to Melbourne whereas everyone else