The Technical Interviews: Toyota

Toyota suffered a turbulent and disappointing year in 2006, despite the momentum that was built up through the 2005 season. Under the guidance of technical director Mike Gascoyne, the team followed an aggressive development plan in 2005, releasing the zero-keel TF105B for the last three races, and then launching the new 2006 car with a B-model already in mind.

The shear resources Toyota appeared to be throwing at the season must have worried some. But the 2006 car was not competitive straight out of the box, largely due to inconsistency and reliability and not because of a fundamental flaw in its design. Moreover, the change to V8 engines and a switch to Bridgestone tyres interrupted the team's stability, after four seasons on Michelin and rock-solid engine reliability.

The team's results for the year were disappointing, ending up just sixth in constructors' championship behind their obvious rivals BMW-Sauber and Honda. Nearly every race weekend was blighted by some mechanical problem or another on at least one car, and of the three trouble-free weekends the team had, two of them saw dismal qualifying performances (in Italy and Bahrain).

This string of 14 race retirements (including one collision), with four of those due to an engine failure, was below par. So were the four pre-race engine changes and another occurrence in qualifying of failure in the rear suspension. Curiously, all these failures were split quite evenly between the two drivers.

Perhaps only the Japanese Grand Prix demonstrated the team's potential, with strong qualifying performances and two points-finishes. But the season highlights were Ralf Schumacher's third place finish in Australia and fourth in France.

As early as three races into the season, Toyota suspended Gascoyne and promoted Pascal Vasselon to head of the chassis department. In contrast, the engine department remained unchanged, under the control of Luca Marmorini. And while the B-spec TF106 duly arrived on time in Monaco, it did not make any great change in the team's competitiveness.

At the end of the season, autosport.com spoke exclusively to the two key technical men in the team, Vasselon and Marmorini, about the season and the opportunities for next year.

Pascal Vasselon

Vasselon came to Toyota from Michelin, however there is a misconception that he is solely a tyre engineer. The smiling Frenchman follows in the footsteps of other notable French engineers who passed through Sup D'Aero, like Henri Durand and Jean Claude Migeot. His technical skills in aero and chassis dynamics bring him great experience, and this was telling in his response to questions about the banned mass damper system.

Critically, this experience has been gained in a large corporate environment, being particularly transferable to the large Toyota F1 team. He joined Toyota during Gascoyne's tenure and was later promoted following Gascoyne's departure. His low-key style is in contrast to Gascoyne's more extrovert nature, which also sits well with Toyota's PR style.

CS: What is your background?

Vasselon: "I joined the Renault F1 project and then worked in the Renault proving ground, where I was working on suspension and suspension tuning [on road cars]. Then I moved to Michelin, first as head of vehicle dynamics and then moved to the racing dept, where I headed the F1 project. So I'm older than you think! But my background was in suspension vehicle dynamics."

CS: What changes have taken place in your time as head of Toyota's chassis department?

Vasselon: "We are still quite stable in terms of people, as you have many conditions for success in F1, and stability is one of them. F1 cannot be anymore about one person's competence, one person who decides everything. It's about the group working better; one person cannot be more competent than the hundreds of engineers. We have to make sure their inputs translate into the right decisions."

CS: Have wind tunnel processes changed?

Vasselon: "It's new without really being new; it's a very normal evolution. We've just tried to make our wind tunnel conditions more representatives for the track.

"The wind tunnel is an analytical tool; it's a measuring tool. The downside is that it doesn't record the exact reality. So the guideline for this facility is to keep the quality of measurement as close as possible to the track conditions

In terms of ride height, roll angle, steer angle and yaw angle."

CS: Do you always run the model at set attitudes or run a simulation to suit the track?

Vasselon: "No, we have a map of ride height and we go through the range.

When we test different body work, we have targets for given characteristics of the circuit. So then we have ride heights representative of that circuit, it's just common sense."

CS: This year, there seemed to be less major changes to the car at each race. Is this a new strategy?

Vasselon: "Absolutement! We have brought parts for every single race, and it could be they are less visible because we don't have new wings. They are more subtle changes. The devil is in the details on this one - we really set the guideline to bring small pieces to every race."

CS: By the mid-way point in the season, around Canada, were you lagging in aero performance?

Vasselon: "It is always difficult to say. We know where we are in terms of good performance. It is essential for us to know where we are in terms of race pace, as it's one of the calculations of race strategy. Our race strategy calculation is not valid for Ferrari or Renault. A good race strategy takes into account the pace of the car; we are the first team to make very precise race evaluations.

"If we did the calculation before July, when we were not reliable, we could not analyse our pace. The strategy after the last six races shows we were the fourth quickest team. The first one is Ferrari; the second Renault; then very to close to Renault is McLaren. Then forth team is Toyota.

"I would not say that we are far away, but we are not the fastest team. Starting from there it is massively difficult to allocate the performance [deficit] to one area of the package. When you are two seconds off, it is probably easier because you have some obvious problems.

"In terms of statistics, we are half a second behind Ferrari, behind the fastest. When you are that close, you have no obvious problems. So there are subtle improvements that we have to make, and it's as simple as that. Our direction for the future is just competing a little more in all areas."

CS: What were the aims with the TF106B?

Vasselon: "The changes came first with the suspension concept at the end of 2005 [on the zero keel TF105B]. Then, the TF106 had an update of the rear - the TF106 was a combination of the TF105B with a new rear.

"We knew the first step of this new front concept was not totally finalised; it was just a first step. So we had to plan an evolution of the TF106B, which was the optimisation of the front concept.

"So the TF106B had the same rear end, just a new monocoque and optimised front suspension. As it came at Monaco, it was just a mechanical upgrade, it came in with the Monaco aero package, which was different anyway."

CS: Was the keel-less design aerodynamically driven?

Vasselon: "Yes, it's aerodynamically driven. It's a decision where you have to balance different areas, like tyre optimisation. There is a clever way to do it, to minimise to almost nothing the damage in terms of tyre usage. If you don't pay too much attention, you can lose control of the roll centre and lose control of camber change."

CS: Was there a specific focus on bargeboard development this year?

Vasselon: "We had three visible development areas, and several subtle changes. It pretty much depends where you are starting from - you start developing the car at the front with the front wing. It just drives the development of the other items. It is impossible to decide, 'let's change the concept of the bargeboards'. In this area, you have to go through a cycle where changing, for example, the concept of the pod wing, you have to iterate an evolution front to rear of the car. It's impossible now to concentrate on an area alone."

CS: You ran rear wheel fairings. Does the flow pass through back through the inside of the wheel?

Vasselon: "No, we try to drive it outside [the wheel]; we don't really want to disturb what happens in the diffuser area."

CS: Is their purpose for brake cooling or drag reduction?

Vasselon: "It's for brake ducts."

CS: Will there be a definitive car for 2007, or another series of upgrades?

Vasselon: "We should enter a more classical cycle, with the introduction of the TF107 at the beginning of 2007."

CS: Did you run mass dampers?

Vasselon: "No, for us it was quite clear that it was borderline [legal]. The mass dampers were there to compensate for the generic problem of an F1 car. The problem for F1 cars is that we run tyres with low pressures for grip, and we run stiff suspension to control aero. When you put stiff suspension on top of soft tyres, you create a system that is unbalanced. We are in a situation where the suspension is stiffer than the tyres.

"This is totally different to passenger cars; with passenger cars, the suspension is usually ten times softer than the tyre. So in a passenger car, when you have a given displacement, 90% of the displacement is in the suspension. When an F1 chassis moves relative to the ground, more than 90% of the displacement is in the tyres, which are unbalanced by nature.

"The mass damper works to compensate for the generic problem. Mass dampers are not a new invention, it is very old. It was used for the first in the hub of the 2cv Citroen.

"So for the same generic problem, we just found another way to achieve the same counter-measures without us following this route [mass dampers], which for us was borderline - not in the sense that the FIA took [banning on movable aero grounds]. For us it was more a moving ballast."

CS: So do you compensate instead with the use of the third damper?

Vasselon: "Yes, there are several ways to achieve the same body dampening you wanted to achieve."

CS: At the front, is it more critical?

Vasselon: "Yes, the two ends have different problems; the frequency range at the front is different to the rear."

Luca Marmorini

While Vasselon is the new guy, Marmorini is a key person at Toyota. His background at Ferrari seems almost forgotten - such is his integration into the Toyota way of doing things. Speaking to the charming Italian always reveals an honesty and straight-forwardness lost on many other technical heads of engine manufacturers.

For 2006, Marmorini and his team had to develop an all-new engine with artificial limits on technology. By the end of the year, he was facing an almost complete freeze on engine technology with the new regulations. Despite the latter issue not being effective until 2007, it had impacts on his plans for the engine they ran in 2006.

CS: How did the season develop?

Marmorini: "Looking at the results of the team, we are definitely not happy. We are probably even unhappier because we showed that our performance was not bad, but we were never consistent enough to have performance in a complete weekend.

"I would say in absolute terms, apart from Renault and Ferrari, I would not say we were the third team. We were among the group who would deserve to be the third team."

CS: How did the season fair for the engine in particular?

Marmorini: "We suffered problems. We suffered some problems in the usage of the engine in the car, but in the end it's always our fault. It's a lesson for the future.

"We tested all the possible situations, and maybe we discovered in Hungary that our traction control could be a problem for the engine, because we haven't done enough tests in the wet conditions.

"From purely an engine point of view, it's a mixed result for us. We are happy about the performance and reliability we had at the end [of the season]. Hopefully, it will be a good push for being better for next year."

CS: How did the fixed trumpets affect you this year?

Marmorini: "We had to take into account temperature effect that we normally didn't have to with adjustable trumpets, as they did it automatically. At the end, we had to give a little bit of torque on the mid-range, because you have to accept a compromise to have top power, but a decent torque on the mid-range.

"Also, the way we developed the engine was different from the usual way at Toyota, because we had to optimise lap times rather than peak power. This is why we did not invest so much in revs, but performance or power in the lap. We learned a lot, and we are ready for next year."

CS: How does it compare to other engines with similar peak and mid-range?

Marmorini: "I cannot judge the engines of the others, but as an engineer I am quite proud of my baby. I think that we had quite a solid mid-range torque.

"I have to say that in the second part of the season, even though the regulations were not approved 100%, but we were thinking about what the FIA were proposing for the year to come. We realised some ways of changing our development strategy based on this.

"Due to the homologation, we were going to introduce an engine that should have revved much higher, but we were not sure of retuning this engine later.

So due to us not being in a position to win the championship, we made a decision that was also thinking about the future, ready ourselves in advance to respond to the new regulations."

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- The Autosport.com Team

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