This year, Toyota celebrated its 50 year long existence in the motor sport field. It has achieved remarkable achievements at Rally championships and other kind of racing championships. Within our field, F1 racing, Toyota achieved… absolutely nothing.

Back in 1999, when the president of Toyota Motor Corporation, Hiroshi Okuda, announced that Toyota would be entering F1, everyone expected the giant to show his teeth.

The first race for Toyota took place in 2002 in Australia. Mika Salo had managed to take the 6th place along with the first championship points for the team. The designer of that car was Gustav Brunner who had taken Andre de Cortanze’s place. In 2004, Mike Gascoyne joined the team to provide it with further help. Gascoyne was famous for his excellent ability to organize all departments. His job in Jordan and Renault were speaking for themselves. Ralf Schumacher joined the team one year later, in 2005, after signing a huge contract (1 million $ for every race), in a team’s effort to built a strong base. Back then Ralf had made plenty of great races with Williams and his coming to Toyota seemed to be an opportunity to join a team that was going to be built around him. Gascoyne also introduced the “two designing groups” philosophy, as he had previously done in Renault.

So during 2004, the group that had designed the car was taking care of it, while the other one had been preparing the 2005 car. During 2006 Gascoyne had been replaced by Pascal Vasselon, who left Michelin to join the team. Still no change in results. In the middle of 2007 there had been some changes in the team’s command, in an effort to change their future in F1. Seems like no matter what the team is doing, it just doesn’t work.

Recently, the new team boss, Yamashina, had been given a two year deadline to bring results. His new goal is to make the team work without a technical director.
“In the past, we have been working according to the European model, which says that all things should be handled by one single man. Without any doubts, this has accelerated our presence at the beginning of our effort. But with the technology evolution we had to change our way of thinking. When we introduced the Toyota’s way, everyone in the team was able to have access to the whole team’s info, without the presence of a technical director. It was then when some members of the team faced some coordination problems. The new system has been working since the beginning of 2007. We have now placed two people, Vasselon and Marmorini in the center of the team. We believe that the teams will start working like this from now on”, he told.

If we look back at 2007 season we will have to add that things are no good this way. There has also been no issue with money. Toyota spent a lot of money during its presence in F1. What is going wrong? What is going to happen if they won’t succeed within the two years deadline?

The first question has been answered by Yamashina. Lack of organization, problems with the new team’s philosophy and a general mess. As for the second, the most possible answer is “Williams”. In their yearly report there is a special part talking about this. Williams and Toyota has been working closely together. Williams has a deep knowledge on the new gearboxes (has been working on the project for 5 years). Red Bull has been using the same kind of gearbox this year and we all know the results (one of its cars was retiring at almost every race). So as the gearbox and the engine are working together as a pack, the cooperation between Toyota and Williams is of great importance. Williams is getting its engines from Toyota and 14 Toyota people have been officially given to Williams to work on this. What made a big impression though, is that Frank Williams had advised Toyota “In many cases, especially politics”. Let’s don’t forget that Nakajima, member of the TDP (Toyota young Driver Program), is the new Williams driver. Even Frank Dernie, a person with great experience left Williams and joined Toyota.

Williams started thinking about its future more drastically. New sponsorship agreements are good news for the team. But this year Williams had won a big backstage battle battle. Do you know why Prodrive case ended up like this? The obvious reason is Williams’ objection on client cars. The less obvious reason has been Baugur company. Baugur is an Investment company from Iceland and it was going to be Prodrive’s sponsor for the coming season. Williams saw the chance of gaining a big sponsor attacked Prodrive and won. It is said that Baugur is also going to buy a portion of the team helping it come out of the financial problems it has.

So Williams is also being built up. The only thing that is missing are the engines. After BMW had chosen to follow its own way, Williams will constantly be in search for an engine provider. So what is going to happen if in two years things will not turn up good for Toyota? Is there going to be some kind of merge between the two teams? Maybe Toyota will just leave and only continue providing Williams with its engines. Then again, what about its huge investment in Koln? There are many questions waiting for their answer and we will all have to wait and see.