Toyota has never been a company to do things in half-measures, so when the Japanese car-maker announced it would launch a full-scale assault on Formula One, people sat up and took notice.
Never mind that other recent F1 debutants such as Jaguar and BAR had achieved little of note, despite having mega-budgets and ace driver pairings at their disposal. Toyota was different - it had a proven record of success in just about every racing formula it had contested. With multiple world rally titles to its credit, along with a couple of near-victories at Le Mans, Toyota was not a manufacturer to be taken lightly.
Unlike other Johnny-come-latelys in the Formula One circuit who just bought existing teams and stuck their own badges on them (read Jaguar/Stewart and Renault/Benetton), Toyota opted to take the hard route by starting its outfit from scratch. It engineered its own V10 powerplant (rumoured to be producing 630kW - not bad for a naturally-aspirated 3-litre unit!) while former Minardi technical director Gustav Brunner was enlisted to design the chassis.
The magnitude of the challenge facing Toyota can be gauged from the fact that even car-makers of the stature of Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Honda baulked at fielding their own teams - preferring to limit their involvement to the supply of engines to existing F1 outfits.
Mercedes-Benz tasted F1 success in 1998 and 1999, when Mika Hakkinen powered to victory in the Benz-propelled McLaren - but it should be remembered that although the engine is emblazoned with the three-pointed star, it is built by British engineering concern Ilmor in Brixworth, Northamptonshire. In fact, it's a standing joke that Stuttgart top brass used to refer to the engine as an Ilmor when it blew up and a Mercedes-Benz when it won!
BMW is starting to make waves with its state-of-the-art V10 that powers the Compaq Williams driven by Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya. It is generally agreed that the Beemer powerplant is the most potent engine on the F1 grid, but it's also no secret BMW needed to poach personnel from rival teams to come up with its superb design.
When Toyota announced it would join the F1 circus, most pundits suggested it would take the Japanese giant at least two or three seasons to be on the pace. Early pre-season testing seemed to justify the cynics' pessimism, with the red-and-white cars setting lacklustre times that made even the Minardis (traditional tail-enders) look quick. But Toyota has since silenced the critics with impressive form in the opening races of 2002.
The Swedish Connection
Toyota had been cautious in predicting results for its maiden season and its motorsport boss, Swede Ove Andersson, told AutoSpeed at the Melbourne motor show in February that the objective was just to finish the first few races. But the wily Andersson is renowned for his publicly low-key approach and when questioned by the media, he has been at pains to promise little.
Toyota's early success is no doubt largely attributable to its thoroughness (it didn't become the third-largest car-maker in the world by accident) and having the right staff in key positions. And perhaps no one holds a more critical post in Toyota's F1 regime than Andersson. As the president of the outfit, the buck stops with him and it's his cojones that are going to be on the chopping block if the whole exercise turns pear-shaped.
But in typically unflappable Scandinavian fashion, Andersson wears the pressure with ease (at least outwardly) and he has the soft-spoken demeanour of a kindly old professor. His association with Toyota is a lengthy one, dating back to 1973, when the carmaker decided to launch a rally programme backed by his managerial and driving expertise.
Racing Pedigree
Although Andersson, 64, is acknowledged as an astute team boss, he is no back-room boffin as his credentials include rallying success at the highest level. He first ventured outside Sweden as a rally driver at the age of 26, when he drove a works Saab on the 1964 Acropolis in Greece. He burst onto the international scene in 1966, when he was engaged by Lancia's Cesare Fiorio to drive a works Fulvia HF. He was immediately securing top-three finishes, and gained his first victory in the 1967 Spanish Rally.
In 1968, he switched to Ford and, with Roger Clark, led the London-Sydney Marathon all the way to Australia in a works Lotus Cortina, only to suffer a broken differential. He remained a front-runner with works Ford Escorts in 1969 and 1970, but had by far his best season in 1971 with Renault. Driving the rear-engined Alpine A110, he won the Monte Carlo Rally, the San Remo Rally, the Austrian Alpine and the Acropolis Rally, helping to bring his team the International Championship of Manufacturers. Unfortunately for Andersson, this was eight years before a World Championship of Drivers was established.
He led again in Monte Carlo and San Remo in 1972, but the Alpines were fragile that season. That December, with works support, Andersson arranged for a Toyota Celica 1600GT to be entered in the RAC Rally, and drove it to ninth overall and first in its class, ahead of the works Datsuns. This was effectively Toyota's first works rally. It was the start of something big.
But Andersson initially remained as a works Alpine Renault driver. His last big result was second, co-driven by Jean Todt (now Ferrari's F1 team manager), in a 1-2-3 by the French team on the first ever round of the World Championship of Manufacturers, the Monte Carlo in January 1973.
That year, Toyota decided to launch a rally program with Andersson as both manager and driver. The operational base was moved to Brussels, Belgium, in February 1975, and his team began to participate in the World Rally Championship as Toyota Team Europe (TTE), preparing and operating Toyota Corollas and Celicas.
Divide and Conquer
In December 1979, Andersson again relocated TTE's base of operations, this time to Cologne in Germany. For a while, Toyota split its competition activities between rallying with TTE, and track racing via its Toyota Racing Developments (TRD) operation in Yokohama, Japan, and the factory-backed Toyota Team TOMS.
During the 1970s Toyota participated in several national championships (UK, France, Germany amongst others) with the full support of the local dealers and Japan. In 1987, TTE undertook a move to custom-built motorsport facilities in Cologne, which have since been expanded in two distinct building phases. At the time the team was in the midst of its first run successes in rallying.
TTE had won all the World Rally Championship events in Africa in the period 1983-1986, and it claimed the FIA's Middle East Rally Championship every year from 1986-1989. In 1987 TTE won the prestigious Hong Kong-Beijing Rally with a Supra.
Then TTE's Toyota Celica GT-Four won the 1990 World Rally Championship of Drivers with Carlos Sainz, and repeated the success with the same driver in 1992. In July 1993, Andersson sold all his shares in Andersson Motorsport to the Toyota Motor Corporation, which formed Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG). The company then based all its European-based competition programs in Cologne, and Andersson was retained as its president.
Two months later, Juha Kankkunen won Rally Australia, and with it the drivers' and manufacturers' titles - the first manufacturers' championship by a Japanese carmaker. Didier Auriol, also driving a Celica GT-Four, repeated the double for Toyota in 1994.
The 1995 season marked the end of the career of TTE's wonderful series of Celica-based rally cars. Andersson and his company then worked towards a program in the new FIA World Rally Car category with the Toyota Corolla WRC and, in track racing, simultaneously embarked on an ambitious Le Mans programme.
The Lure of Le Mans and F1
In January 1997, Andersson recruited André de Cortanze (who had designed the Peugeot 905 that had beaten TRD's Toyota TS010 in the 1992 World Sportscar Championship) to lead the design team for the spectacular GT-One, which was built and operated by Toyota Motorsport.
But victory narrowly eluded the GT-One racing cars at Le Mans in 1998 and 1999. One of them was in sight of winning the 24-hour race in 1999 when a tyre puncture thwarted its bid. But there was compensation that year when the Corolla WRC won the Manufacturers' title in the World Rally Championship.
Also that year, Toyota asked Andersson to initiate the research and development for Toyota's Formula 1 project. Early results in the 2002 season serve to illustrate how far Toyota's F1 endeavours have progressed over the past three years.
"As president of Toyota Motorsport I feel a real sense of achievement in getting this far," Andersson told AutoSpeed at the Melbourne motor show. "From nothing we have created an F1 chassis, a Toyota V10 engine and a team of over 550 people from 30 different nations...the United Nations of motorsport."
"This is going to be a learning year for us. We want to try and gain respect within the F1 paddock. We want to be the team that at the end of the year everybody will say, 'We think they did a reasonable job.'"
"We have a very experienced pair of drivers in Mika and Allan. Our target for 2002 is to be realistic, qualify for every race, finish as many races as possible, learn about Formula One, and to become a team in the truest sense of the word 'team.'"
Salo has six years of F1 experience with teams such as Tyrrell, Arrows and Sauber. In 1999, substituting for the injured Michael Schumacher at Ferrari, Salo led the German Grand Prix before following team orders and moving over to allow teammate Eddie Irvine to win.
While new to F1, Allan McNish is a highly experienced racer, having worked as a F1 test driver and showing his talent in prototype sports car racing where he won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1997 and the American Le Mans Series championship in 2000.
Gustav Brunner was the chief designer of the TF102, which is a completely new car compared to the prototype used in testing. "There is nothing left from the old car," according to Brunner. "Everything is new. The old car was too heavy."
Brunner works alongside Dago Rohrer, the technical manager of the chassis department and Norbert Kreyer, who developed the Toyota V10 from scratch. Like Ferrari, Toyota builds the entire car, engine and gearbox under one roof.
"There are only advantages to doing it that way," Andersson said. "We are all guilty if the car does not work - we have no excuses."
As for what Toyota will achieve in its first F1 season, Andersson said it is a case of wait-and-see. "We are beginners," he said, "we have to learn..."
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Number-Crunching
30,000 - Toyota's recently expanded F1 factory covers more than 30,000 metres (approximately 90,000 square feet). 20,967 - The number of kilometres (13,028 miles) the prototype F1 car covered between March and November 2001. 3000 - Mika Salo and Allan McNish completed 3000 testing laps in that same time period. 30 - The Panasonic Toyota F1 team comprises employees from 30 different countries and calls itself The United Nations of F1. 3 - The number of years ago that Toyota announced its intention to enter F1 and started its research-and-design program. 2 - The number of years since Toyota ended its Rally and Le Mans programs to concentrate on the F1 program. 1 - Toyota's president of motorsport said Toyota has one aim - to challenge for and one day win the FIA Formula One Constructors and Drivers Championship.
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