Bothered and Bewildered: interview with the Toyota drivers

We'll know a lot more about how 2006 will unfold after this weekend in Imola. Traditionally, the start of the European season is when all the teams introduce bits and pieces that have been in the pipeline for weeks but weren't quite ready for the start of the season. There are also engine upgrades for those eligible for a change.

The first three races have provided some clues as to where everyone's true level is, but perhaps the most confusing situation is that of Toyota.

In Bahrain, the white and red cars were miles off the pace, struggling to get temperature into their Bridgestones even in the desert conditions. In Australia, everyone else had similar problems, but in part because extra homework on tyre temperatures had paid off, Toyota suffered less than others. Riding his luck through the safety car periods, Ralf Schumacher even overcame a drive-through penalty to charge on to the podium.

So what is the real story? Was the team flattered a little in Australia because others suffered more? And what happens to the form book when the definitive TF106B is introduced, as scheduled, in Monaco?

Those are difficult questions to answer from the outside, but they've clearly caused some consternation even within the Toyota camp. A couple of days after Melbourne came the news that technical director Mike Gascoyne was leaving the team, and one can only assume that wouldn't have happened had the cars been at the sharp end from the start of the season, as they were in 2005.

The real story has yet to emerge, but it's not hard to imagine that Gascoyne's 'take no prisoners' mentality might have caused problems in a team that is, in the end, a division of a global corporation. Whatever the truth, it can't be good for any team to lose both their technical director and chief designer within such a short space of time (Gustav Brunner went in December).

However, it could be argued that Gascoyne's job was to sort out the structure of the team, get the wind tunnel programme working properly and so on, and that to a large degree his work has finished.

Gascoyne has left a good team of people behind, now led by ex-Michelin man Pascal Vasselon, and they've got the chance to prove what they can do. Imola will be an interesting test for all concerned.

"In general, it has been a bit tough," says Schumacher of the start of the season. "I still believe that there is nothing particularly wrong with the concept of the car. I must say our engine runs well - the failure I had in Malaysia had nothing to do with the engine itself. So they're doing a very good job."

Toyota TF106B © LAT

Of course, any switch of tyre company is bound to involve a period of adjustment, and the move to Bridgestone has been the major issue over the last few months.

"If you switch a tyre, then certainly it takes a while until you have experience with the company itself, and with the product," says Ralf. "Then we had an ongoing improvement in tyres and casing, and you can clearly see that Ferrari have been so long with them, and yet it still needs a clever decision [to get things right].

"There are some things from our side we need to learn as quickly as possible. It's just a different construction, a different compound that enables you to maybe use different pressures, different cambers, stuff like that."

It seems that the problems are related to the fact that the car is very gentle on its tyres, a characteristic that was handy last year when a set had to last a race distance, but is not so useful now.

"Last year we were the best on the tyres, basically, so that's why we could always run the softest tyre available from Michelin. There is the same tendency now, but we're developing our way through that. For five years, when I was at Williams, we were always eating up the tyres, and we never found out why. Here, it's so gentle with them, and still we have to understand why!"

You might think that all the confusion over tyres would make it difficult to ensure that the car is developed in the right direction, but Schumacher says it's not a major issue.

"It doesn't really make too much difference. What really makes the car fast is aerodynamics, a clever gearbox maybe, shift time and weight, and a good engine. And that won't be affected by tyres, as long as you don't have any real mistakes within the construction of the car, which we don't have."

One of the reasons why the German is so confident about the car itself is the fact that much of it was carried over from last year, or at least the TF105B introduced right at the end of the season. He says he supports Gascoyne's decision to bring the TF106 out early and follow it up with a definitive new car for Monaco, although he plays down the significance of the latter.

"I wouldn't call it a brand new car! It's just a different philosophy, the car we are running now is very similar to last year's car, except the aerodynamics, but chassis-wise and front-end it's very similar to last year's. We'd rather put the engine and development into this year's car a little longer, that's why our new monocoque comes a bit later, but it's nothing unusual. We had it at Williams, and even at Jordan...

Toyota TF106B © LAT

"We just wanted to make sure we came out with a new package as soon as possible in order to run the V8 as much as possible, and the gearbox. We reorganised the whole rear-end, and we weren't sure if that was the right move or not. It turned out to be perfectly right, but you never know, that's why we brought out everything so early, and that was a good move."

The podium finish, after an uncharacteristically aggressive drive, brought some respite. Ralf clearly expects more, but he's prepared to be patient.

"It's always frustrating if you can't win, because we're all here to win. As long as you see the potential to win, then it doesn't influence you too much. At the same time I've always loved to push myself and the team to a degree that we can do that - I have been pretty much like that my whole career, so I really don't mind to have another few years like that if the end result is OK."

Ralf has at least had the satisfaction of twice getting into the points this year. In contrast, Jarno Trulli has had a terrible time. After struggling at the back in Bahrain, his race in Malaysia was compromised after he picked up critical aero damage on the first lap.

Then, in Australia, Trulli was eliminated in a first lap collision with David Coulthard and was lucky to escape official censure. He thus didn't get a chance to see what the car could do over a race distance in Melbourne, so he has only Bahrain and Malaysia with which to make a real judgement.

"To be honest, during the first two races I really had major problems," says the Italian. "So the true potential didn't come out from myself, and obviously you struggle, you look bad, and you don't perform well. But that's not the problem at the moment, we have other problems to solve. The car is not performing as it should, and we are still looking for a solution.

"When you are so far from where you should be, normally the team and the driver try many different things, many different directions, just to come up with a solution. Sometimes you might get it right, sometime you might get it wrong.

"There's nothing obviously wrong with the car, nothing that is a major problem. The downforce level is OK. We have compared the wind tunnel level and on the track the differences between the two aero packages, between the old car and the new car, and it's correct."

Jarno says that the tyre situation has left him a little confused: "The problem is that when something is not working, when you cannot make the tyre work, you don't know what's right and what's wrong. The difficulty is you just try to balance the car. You cannot judge anything; it's a very difficult situation.

Ralf Schumacher celebrates his 3rd place in the 2006 Australian Grand Prix © LAT

"In wintertime, we always struggled for tyre temperatures. And in general all Bridgestone runners did. We could feel that we were worse than the others, but we also expected a better situation in Bahrain.

"During this winter we tried to analyse data and tried to solve the problem and push more temperature into the tyres, but we never managed to succeed. We got finally to Bahrain, and we realised we were nowhere."

As noted earlier, the car is gentle on its tyres, but Trulli says that it's not just a matter of going softer with them.

"It's a bit more complicated than that, because you cannot only go softer, you have to make sure the tyres last, and they don't grain as well. It's a compromise. The tyres have gone softer compared to last year, so anyway it is a problem. Our tyre wear is so low at the end of the race.

"Anything can happen, this year especially we're playing about with tenths for two or three rows, so you really need to get this right, and you really need to make the tyre work properly over one lap.

"We're still working to try to understand it. For me, Malaysia was OK, especially because I had to sacrifice Saturday morning because the team asked me to do a certain kind of job in order to understand certain things.

"This cost me a lot in terms of car balance, because that direction wasn't good at all. By the time I came back to probably the right direction, my set-up was not good any more, because the track had made a major improvement, so I found myself with a lot of understeer in qualifying. During the race, I cannot say anything, because the car was badly damaged.

"The car handled really badly, especially under braking, and also in the Esses corner. I had very poor traction, and only at the end of the race my team said that I had a broken diffuser, and both rear endplates broken, so it wasn't very good!

"I was running in the top eight in the beginning, I was behind [Nick] Heidfeld, so I was racing... But I was just losing time and I couldn't understand why. We tried to rebalance the car, but the balance shift in terms of aero was too big."

Jarno Trulli © LAT

Although he didn't get to race in Australia, Jarno acknowledges that the latest generation of tyres, tried the previous week at Paul Ricard, represented progress: "We made a good step ahead, we understood a bit of our problem, but there's still a long way to go."

The big frustration for Jarno is that qualifying has always been his major strength, and thus far he hasn't been able to take advantage of it.

"With the new format, it hasn't changed much because in a way there is always one lap available if you really want to do it properly. OK, I've seen some teams doing two laps and putting two sets of new tyres, but in the end it's always the last lap that really counts.

"I'm quite hurting compared to the others, but especially compared to my teammate, because my driving style is quite smooth, so I lose a lot of temperature through the run, especially during the race. We struggle already on the qualifying lap, and we struggle at the beginning when we go out from the grid.

"There is a lot of work to do in order to make our tyres work together with our chassis. So far the Bridgestone runners have been competitive, so it proves that the tyres are competitive, and I really believe that we are not showing the performance of our package.

"I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed because I know that we've got a good package. It's difficult now to tell you and show you that we can be good, but at the moment there is something which is stopping us from showing the true performance."

Imola will be a tough one, and it's worth recalling the track has not been kind to Toyota in the past. Last year, Trulli followed up his podiums in Malaysia and Bahrain with a lowly seventh, which became fifth after the BARs were excluded.

Inevitably, much depends on what Bridgestone turns up with - and what the weather does over the course of the weekend.