Toyota: Teams Approved Third Test Car

The Japanese manufacturer began using an extra car at the Jerez test last month and will again use a third car, for their V8 development programme, at Monza this week. BAR are also running a third car again.

Although the use of this third car in Jerez caused some controversy about whether it broke the testing agreement signed by the non-Ferrari teams, which limits them to running two cars at each test, the team say their actions have been approved by their rivals.

The team do not break the wording of the testing agreement because they ensure they only have two cars on track at the same time.

Richard Cregan, Toyota's general manager of F1 Operations, told Autosport-Atlas the agreement among teams about being allowed to bring extra cars to tests was actually reached earlier this year.

However, after some teams were left unsure about the actions of Toyota and BAR in running the extra cars at Jerez, F1 team managers had talked about the matter since that test and there is no longer an issue.

"This was discussed earlier in the year where we talked about running the V8 cars and decided that the limit was two cars on track at any one location," said Cregan. "So that meant you could take three cars, but only run two on the track at the same time.

"Everyone agreed about that at the time, but then there was the question of whether the V8 car was allowed outside the limits of the testing agreement completely. We decided that we would stick with the two-car limit.

"When this matter came up at Jerez, it was discussed again afterwards to clarify the situation, but after referring back to what was discussed earlier in the year everyone is happy that we are following the agreement."

This week's Monza test may well be the final time that Toyota run three cars, however, because the team are planning to cut back on their testing for the remainder of the year.

"We want to try and reduce costs from now until the end of the year," added Cregan. "We are looking at only running the V8 car at some tests so this could be the last time that we run three cars anyway."