The Last Interview: Q & A with Mike Gascoyne

A few hours after the end of the Australian Grand Prix, I went down to the Toyota garage in search of Mike Gascoyne. Open and forthright, he's always good value after a race, whatever the result. On this occasion, Ralf Schumacher's unexpected third place, a result that exceeded even Toyota's expectations, guaranteed some lively conversation, and he'd already had a few visitors.

The result appeared to have gone some way to making up for the disaster that was Bahrain. On that occasion, Toyota had struggled with the sort of tyre temperature problems that hit everyone else in Australia. Mike was certainly upbeat, and if there was some serious aggravation going on behind the scenes, he didn't show it.

And yet a couple of days later came rumours of his departure, followed by an official statement to the effect that he'd been "suspended indefinitely". There's no way back from a phrase like that; it can only mean that we won't be seeing him in a Toyota shirt again.

It may take some time for the full story to emerge (and these things always have two sides to them), but the official line of a "difference of opinion" is probably not too far from the truth. It seems he might have had that clash with the most senior Japanese executive with a direct involvement with the programme, and if someone of seniority in the parent company takes against you, game over.

Gascoyne is known for his aggressive, no holds barred approach, but that's why they hired him in the first place - to get things kicked into shape. Hard-edged racers do not always have time to cope with the corporate political niceties.

Almost since the day he arrived in Cologne there have been suggestions that he might not be staying very long - Toyota had a near disastrous first outing under his tenure in Melbourne a couple of years ago. The fact that he was the higher paid employee of a huge global corporation, the two drivers apart, ensured that he would always be in the firing line, both internally and from those in other teams who envied his mega buck deal.

The news will certainly not have gone down well with Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher, both of whom have a lot of time for Mike, and signed up knowing he was going to be there. The irony is that after a shaky start with the TF106, things were falling into place.

We have yet to see the full results of Gascoyne's plan to test the car early, add an aero update for Bahrain, and introduce the TF106B for Monaco. It may be that some folk in the company jumped to conclusions after just one race, and the turnaround in Australia came too late. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

Ralf Schumacher on the podium in the 2006 Australian Grand Prix © LAT

In the mean time, here's what he had to say about Australia...

Q: Ralf had some luck on his way to third, but you have to be there to take advantage...

Gascoyne: "There was some luck involved, but you make your own luck. Ralf was racing pretty strongly. At the first restart he had quite a few problems and lost a couple of places, and then after the drive-through [penalty] I think we thought we'd thrown it away. But it came back to us, and we got all the strategy calls right, and you have to say Ralf did a great job."

Q: He seemed to gain ground when everyone made their second pitstop under the safety car...

Gascoyne: "We were held up behind [Jacques] Villeneuve, and actually we thought it might not fall very well for us. But obviously McLaren had their problems, and that just allowed us to get in and out pretty cleanly, and we picked up the places. Then on the restart from that we picked up another couple, we went past [Jenson] Button and [Nick] Heidfeld.

"You saw on the last restart, Heidfeld disappeared 15 seconds back in two or three laps, Juan Pablo Montoya as well. You could see they then got up to temperature and were pushing back up to us. We clearly got the tyre started very well. We weren't disappointed to see Montoya fall off, shall we say! It would have been a tough last 15 laps."

Q: So like the others, you had problems getting the tyres up to temperature?

Gascoyne: "We worked really hard with him on getting temperature into the tyres on the restart after the first one. It's quite pleasing, after we struggled in Bahrain.

"I'm sure a lot of people didn't believe us when we said we were struggling to get the tyres to work, here you see lots of people had the problem, and actually we were able to keep on top of it.

"I think we endured a difficult Bahrain, but we learned our lessons, and it's quite pleasing for us as a team that we learned from it, and when it next happened, and it happened to everyone, we kept on top of it. I think that's why we got the good result."

Q: What did you tell Ralf to do?

Gascoyne: "He knows what to do, but just really working at him to say last time it wasn't good, so really do it. And of course he was then able to pass people. You've just got to keep working, working, working to keep the temperature up, and not just do it in the last half a lap. If they've dropped too much, then you can't do it."

Toyota switched to Bridgestone tyres for 2006 © XPB/LAT

Q: So what sort of things are involved in warming the tyres?

Gascoyne: "It's spinning the wheels, it's braking hard, which is why you see people locking up under the safety car, because they're really pushing it on the limit just to generate tyre temperature. You can loosen up the traction control so that you get more spin.

"It's all things like that, and that's what we've worked very hard on over the last test, to make sure we could do that, and it obviously paid off for us. I think the team can be proud of itself."

Q: And the latest Bridgestone worked well in these conditions?

Gascoyne: "It was designed for these conditions. You saw Michael [Schumacher] struggling desperately [with the older tyre]. He just wasn't in the race, he was pushing too hard. How many times did he fall off before he eventually did it properly? He was pushing hard, but obviously massively struggling with grip.

"They had the tyre they used in Bahrain, where we had the problem and they didn't. Here they've got the problem. We were on the new spec that we tried at Paul Ricard. We felt we needed to go for the tyre that had the better warm-up."

Q: Did the rain on Saturday make things even harder for teams to understand their tyres?

Gascoyne: "It made it more difficult, but from the work we did on Friday, we were fairly sure of where we were going to go. But it does make it more difficult. And with the warm-up problems everyone was having, it made it really critical. We were pretty confident going into qualifying that we were in a good position.'"

Q: Does a result like this take the pressure off a bit?

Gascoyne: "Pressure off is the wrong phrase, because we always said we feel we've got a competitive car, and when we get the tyres working properly you'll see it. But it's nice to do it!

"We started our season a couple of races too late, but it's good to get it kick-started. We said the car's OK, but we're struggling on the tyres, and it was easy for people to criticise. So, thanks to Bridgestone, because they brought something along that's really helped us, and it's nice to then go and show where the car can run."

Jarno Trulli in pre-season testing at Vallelunga © Toyota

Q: In Malaysia, Jarno said the early races would be a test session. Have you improved faster than expected?

Gascoyne: "We were always confident in what we'd done, and when we got the tyre to work competitively, we felt we'd be a competitive team. It's nice to have done that. But I think we as a team always felt confident; it's inevitable that you're going to draw criticism when you're not competitive."

Q: You are bringing a TF106B to Monaco. Does that give you extra confidence for the future?

Gascoyne: "It's not suddenly going to be a second a lap quicker, or whatever. It should be an improvement. Aerodynamically, it's a couple of tenths better; mechanically it's a little bit better. But it's not going to go a second quicker, unfortunately."

Q: Did you have a little smile when you saw the Honda engine blowing up?

Gascoyne: "For me it makes no difference, but I'm sure that sitting back in Japan, some of our bosses won't have been disappointed with the moment!"