How Toyota's grand plans for F1 domination fell flat

"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 it 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.

"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" Allan McNish

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 windtunnel 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 explains. "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," says McNish. "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."

That 2002 season 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.

The team finished its debut season 10th in the constructors' championship, with no further points finishes. 
For a company that prided itself on being world class, this looked and felt like failure

"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 was just scratching the surface.

"After the first races, the expectation went from being merely 'respectable' to suddenly we had to finish in the top six in the constructors'. That put a lot of pressure on people and the frustration started to build."

On the operational front, the rigour of F1 was also taking its toll, the Gustav Brunner-designed TF102 having 'zero development' during the season as the factory came to terms with the relentless nature of the championship.

"The first year was a big lesson for the team," adds McNish. "Being able to build, test and race a car is fine, but when you have to do all three at the same time that's a different story. We had open testing at the time, so we were testing the 2002 race car extensively, racing that car and also building the 2003 car. It was a massive amount of work and took them by surprise."

On the management front, one of the figures who had taken centre stage was Tsutomu Tomita. He cut his teeth at Toyota working on engine design in the 1970s, rising through the ranks to take overall charge of the company's motorsport programmes in 1996. Tomita is credited with putting together the strategy to enter Formula 1 and, as a board member, securing the necessary funding. The plan was to do everything in-house, Ferrari style, resulting in a workforce whose numbers dwarfed the opposition.

The team finished its debut season 10th in the constructors' championship, with no further points finishes. Only Arrows lagged behind, 
and that team went out of business mid-season. 
For a company that prided itself on being world class, this looked and felt like failure. Change was instant, the axe falling on both McNish and Salo, replaced by Toyota's newly crowned CART Champ Car champion Cristiano da Matta, and French veteran Olivier Panis.

The 2003 season produced a slight improvement, but eighth in the constructors' - ahead of declining Jordan and diminutive Minardi - was no cause for celebration. Tomita moved into Cologne and Andersson was
 semi-retired, remaining on as a consultant. This news came as an unpleasant surprise to the team's latest recruit, technical director Mike Gascoyne, recently lured from Renault.

"When Ove approached me, I did not realise how difficult the situation was," Gascoyne reflects. "He explained they wanted to take the performance to the next level, had great facilities and wanted to do things properly. That's really what you want to hear, so I went for it only to find that, when I turned up, literally on day one, Ove was on his way out."

"The team showed me the TF104's aero numbers. They were happy with them, but were complaining that the car had a braking problem. I had a look at the aero and it was 20% down on where Renault was. We didn't have a braking problem, we had a downforce problem!" Mike Gascoyne

Instead, Tomita opted to bring in John Howett, who had worked in the Team Toyota Europe rally team with Andersson back in the 1970s before embarking on a 20-year career with Toyota and Lexus. Here was a company man, through and through.

"Whenever I went to Japan with John 
I realised how astute he was with the Japanese bosses, particularly at boardroom level," recalls Gascoyne. But all was not well back in Cologne. "I was constantly fighting a rearguard action," continues Gascoyne. "At Renault, I had enjoyed the full support of Flavio Briatore, but when 
I joined Toyota at Ove's invitation, I found that John had been put in charge and that he and 
I came at things from a very different perspective.

"I would be told that the technical budget was €384million [£343million] but that I should 
aim to trim 2% off that, or my challenge would 
be to save 5%. That made no sense to me, so 
I would say to John 'just tell me how much I have to spend?' He did not understand that money spent properly translated into laptime. He was a corporate guy, but I wanted to go racing, and that was the difference."

Arriving at the end of 2003, Gascoyne had little influence over the 2004 car, which carried the team to another eighth-place finish in the constructors' championship, this time with fewer points than the previous year.

"The team showed me the TF104's aero numbers," continues Gascoyne, "which is how they measured everything. They were happy with them, but were complaining that the car had a braking problem. I had a look at the aero and it was 20% down on where Renault was, so trying to match [Fernando] Alonso's braking point was a waste of time. We didn't have a braking problem, we had a downforce problem!"

Neither da Matta nor Panis lasted the season, the former dropped mid-year and the latter retiring before the season was out, Ricardo Zonta and Jarno Trulli being drafted in as replacements. Stability was a distant concept.

"It was very easy for them to point the finger," suggests McNish. "It's like football managers being changed, it's only one person compared
 to the whole team, so it's quite an easy change for them to make."

Engineering a team's performance through driver changes is seldom successful, but McNish points out it can give a corporate team owner the impression they are at least doing something about the team's (lack of) performance.

For 2005, and the arrival of the first car produced under Gascoyne's technical leadership, Trulli was retained and Ralf Schumacher signed from Williams. Schumacher's deal was eye-watering, evidenced by an astonished but delighted manager Willi Weber seeking refuge in the Jaguar motorhome during the course of the 2004 European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring.

"They've just signed him," Weber admitted to his audience, "and someone is running down a corridor in Tokyo waving a fax and shouting 'we've signed Schumacher'. But they've got 
the wrong one!"

"Had it not been for what happened in Indianapolis, I believe Jarno could have won that race and we'd have beaten Ferrari into third place in the constructors' championship" Mike Gascoyne

The new season started in promising fashion, Trulli putting the TF105 second on the grid in Melbourne (under the new and short-lived amalgamated qualifying system) and racing strongly behind Giancarlo's Fisichella's Renault before a blistered tyre dropped Trulli to ninth. Gascoyne was summoned to Japan to be told that qualifying second and finishing outside the points was unacceptable, only for Trulli to qualify and finish second in Malaysia, and repeat the feat after starting third in Bahrain. The corporate knives were sheathed.

Although there were three more podiums in Spain (Trulli), Hungary and China (Schumacher), the performance ebbed as other teams improved. Schumacher took a jubilant pole position at Toyota's home grand prix in Japan but could only finish eighth, while pole for Trulli at Indianapolis was rendered pointless as a result of the infamous tyre debacle that led to only the Bridgestone runners starting the race. Toyota's shift from Michelin to Bridgestone was another move Gascoyne found frustrating.

"That was not my decision," he says. "This was corporate Japan making a deal based on first fit [of road tyres to cars] and nothing to do with what was right for the Formula 1 programme. Had it not been for what happened in Indianapolis, I believe Jarno could have won that race and we'd have beaten Ferrari into third place in the constructors' championship."

As it was, Toyota finished fourth, 12 points behind the Scuderia, and suddenly it looked as though the long-awaited surge in performance was gaining real momentum. Then came 2006, and a tough start with midfield qualifying performances in the first two races resulting in only a single world championship point.

The difference between the Bridgestone and Michelin tyres wasn't just a factor of grip. They were rounder in profile and had stiffer sidewalls, which had implications for both aerodynamics and chassis dynamics - awful timing for a team that had spent months working on a 'zero keel' front end. It meant having to rethink the front end completely, which would have a cascade of effects further down the car.

F1 also downsized from three-litre V10s to 2.4-litre V8s in 2006, which meant the engines were physically shorter. This was simply one change too many for the resources available, for it would require a completely new monocoque design or a new (longer) gearbox - or both.
 At launch, the TF106 simply had a spacer fitted between the tub and the engine to retain the existing wheelbase. The definitive 2006 car, with zero-keel front suspension and new geometry, plus a larger fuel tank to replace the spacer, wouldn't be ready until later.

A podium for Schumacher in Melbourne (the season started with Bahrain and Malaysia) indicated the potential within the package, but by then Gascoyne found himself pulled into a meeting at which he was presented with an eight-point list of things he had done wrong.

"I remember number three," he recalls, quoting from memory, "'The executive makes too many decisions based on gut feel and experience.' This was the problem, because in racing you have to make a decision and go with it, but the Toyota Way was to follow the process, get all the information and reach a conclusion six months down the line."

"Toyota had too many high objectives in F1 without a deep understanding of what it would take to achieve them" Allan McNish

The Toyota Way is a set of principles that guides the management of Toyota Motor Corporation. There are 14 principles in total, which include Kaizen - a working process based on continuous improvement - and Genchi Genbutsu which literally means 'go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the system'.

Gascoyne demanded too much independence in order to make the quick decisions he felt were necessary for Toyota to properly compete rather than merely participate. He was shown the door.

The team slid to sixth in the standings in 2006 and 2007, Tomita returning to Japan, replaced by Yamashina. An improvement to fifth in 2008 was followed by a strong start to 2009 with three podiums from the first four races, plus a front row lockout and a fastest lap. Then came the catastrophic financial results from head office...

Looking back on the programme, with frequent driver changes early on, inexperienced management learning the ropes and a desperate need to fulfil President Toyoda's desire to win The Toyota Way, it is clear that the language of F1 was one the Japanese giant struggled to master.

"It was a missed opportunity," says McNish. "A very good university for people, including some real talents such as Dieter Gass, Jens Marquardt and Richard Cregan, who went on to achieve a lot in motorsport.

"Ultimately, Toyota had too many high objectives in F1 without a deep understanding of what it would take to achieve them. It stumbled at the beginning, picked up a bit of momentum, got to the point where it could start to fight for wins but by then world events had overtaken it."

Gascoyne agrees: "They were close to getting it right. I never had any issues within my design team, we just wanted to get on with the job, 
and there were very many really good people.
 What let it down was a lack of understanding at the top. Too many people writing reports saying that 'we would have won if...'.

"I used to say that the only report that matters is the results published by Bernie Ecclestone's business at 4 o'clock on the Sunday afternoon. I'm not sure they liked that."