Rumor is Montezemelo is behind this, but the loses having 13 teams on the grid. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81828
Stefanovic complained to the European Commission in 09 about the alleged bias towards teams using Cosworth engines as per Porno Max dictated, and was right IMO> However this along with Coughlan and other things will have not had the desired effect to start with, to get a entry. By the sounds of things the crying shame is that he has a great set-up for a new team, access to 2 wind tunnels great staff ect the lot. What he did wrong was bang on the F1 door, but banged on it in the wrong way.
lameola. As usuall we the fans get screwed by not having more cars on the track. Thanks F1. The Serb must have really pissed someone off to not be allowed to race with the kind of set up they have.
the FIA press release (in another thread) gives one the impression that it was the antics of KA and PW that were a good source of Stefan not being on the grid. They screwed around for quite a long time knowing they weren't going to be on the grid, then their silly four race, then they even more stupid "reserve a spot" for 2011 - all taking valuable time in which a decision should have been made. I hope the FIA will not accept any entries with those bozos names on it. Hopefully SHOULD a vacancy occur for 2011 it will go to a professional, well respected entry such as ProDrive or Lola....not a circus entry. Carol
The worst part about Stefan GP not having an entry is that we don't get to see Villeneuve again. Love him or hate him, but the guy gives us lots to talk about. And 5 WDCs on the grid hasn't been seen in decades (last time was in the mid eighties).
No sorrow from me. Toyota's efforts were pathetic throughout the years anyway. Amongst the highest budgets, but nothing to show for it (0 wins, a few podiums, and some championship points). Good riddance to Toyota and its legacy. The only sympathy I have is for the workers who may lose their jobs and for not seeing Villeneuve with a seat.
This attitude really surprises me, and frankly irritates me. Why are you so upset at Toyota for spending $$$ without winning? You don't want people in F1 unless they win? Should STR and Force India piss off too since they haven't won anything? Or Red Bull for that matter? RBR struggled for a while and it was only this year they did well. Same with Honda, they struggled for years before they won anything (as Brawn). What about Williams, for that matter - they haven't won anything in a long time - are they ready to be cat-called and be labeled pathetic losers who should just go home? And Minardi were losers who should have gone home? And Jordan? And all the others? The fact is that the top teams generally do well for a few years then go cold. Ferrari had a big roll, so did McLaren and before that, Williams. Renault had a little stint in there too. So given you have at least 4 top teams, if they generally crest for 1-3 years winning 1-2 WCC's, how is it pathetic that Toyota didn't win? Were they expected to start a new team totally from scratch and have won WDC/WCC within 3 years? If they came in and dominated from their 2nd year and won WDC/WCC every year thereafter, would you guys be happy and commending them or flaming them still, just for a different reason? I give tremendous kudos to Toyota and Honda and BMW for trying. I can't understand why anyone would be genuinely aggravated by them and want them out of the sport. Makes zero sense.
Toyota would have been better off installing the faulty throttle pedals in their F1 cars. Surely they would have been faster around the track...
What I don't like about Toyota's F1 approach and business model was the inefficiency of their spending and the belief that blindly dumping a bunch of money into the team would lead to success (as they have demonstrated in NASCAR). I have worked in the auto industry and worked closely with most of the auto makers in that sell in the North American market for the past five years. I can tell you if Toyota's F1 team was run with the same shady practices and flawed model (about which I will not elaborate) as the Toyota Motor Company, I am not sad to see their efforts end in futility.
Why do you believe they thought that "blindly dumping a bunch of money into the team would lead to success"? Couldn't it have been that they were mounting an honest and earnest effort to be competitive? They don't have the history that Ferrari or McLaren do, so many things they do would necessarily cost more. Do you feel it is possible in modern Formula 1 on a shoestring budget? Brawn is an invalid example, as that was the 08-designed Honda car that cost several hundred million. As for shady practices and flawed model, it can't be that flawed, since they are they largest automaker in the world. They beat all the others, so if their model is flawed, the others must be... what, incompetent? Not trying to sound combative at all... I just don't think there is really any substance to the anger about Toyota. Renault spent a ton of money to be slow for a long time. Ferrari spent a ton of money for years and years to get worse results than Toyota did. Same with Williams, McLaren, all of them. They've all had dry spells, and what start-from-scratch team has had more success than Toyota? I applaud them for trying, and I hope they will be back.
***Rambling Warning*** I am not trying to be combative either, and I respect all your counter points. I am somewhat new to F1 (followed the sport closely for less than 5 years), so I sometimes have a different and sometimes naive/ignorant point of view than a lot of long time fans who know more of the sport's history than I do. Also, I admit that my beef with Toyota lies more off the track than on... I believe I remember Toyota saying in recent years that their goal was to win a race. It disappoints me that with the budget they were working with, that they failed to meet their goals. I am not sure how much Japanese business culture there was in the management of the F1 team, but I felt that it was definitely doable, and teams have done more with much less in the past. I have heard that some teams (Toyota and Honda) had annual budgets of more than $400 million. I don't think it is possible to win championships with a shoestring budget, but I do believe it is possible to either (1) achieve the results Toyota has with a much smaller budget (2) achieve greater results than Toyota with Toyota's budget. It interests me to see how the Virgin team does this year, with a budget of $45 million (I think that is the figure Branson threw out). That was also why I had a great interest of USF1 and their alleged business model. They were designing a car that was supposedly vastly different in several aspects (for example transverse gearbox) with a development cost, as Ken Anderson hinted at today in an interview, of roughly $20-$30 million. They ALMOST got the job done. It would have been interesting to me to see how competitive they were compared to the new teams, and how they developed the car over time to compete with the faster and more established teams. Although it is possible now to have lower budgets due to the engine freeze and standardization of some parts and electronics, I think the $400 million some manufacturers were spending was excessive and that it could be done for cheaper. I am not, however, familiar with the cost of doing business overseas in Europe, so I could be completely off base here. Another aspect that set USF1 apart from the others was that they were trying several things on their car that were radically different from the "norm" of F1 (this is according to a Bob Varsha interview several weeks ago; for what it's worth, I have a high amount of respect for Varsha, his honesty, and his commentating abilities). Something that has become the status quo of F1 is following the leader. Whatever the top teams are doing, the rest of the teams follow this practice (for example, the Red Bull RB5 nose humps, the Brawn double diffuser). As an engineer, I have seen many decisions such as these made to follow the engineering solution of the leader, without understanding WHY this solution is better or more advantageous. This usually results in poor or improper execution. I'm not saying Toyota definitely did this, but this might have been the case. Sometimes it is best to solve a problem by starting from the ground up, rather than inherit a problem and trying to put a band-aid on a gash. As we are seeing now, with their unintended acceleration issue, they made a huge push to be the largest auto maker, and expanded too quickly for its own good. They grew based on their reputation of perceived quality, but their actual quality suffered due to the higher volumes they were pushing out. The same thing will likely happen to Hyundai in the future. I have worked at a tier 1 automotive supplier and although I'm unable to go into details, I have reason to believe that Toyota does indeed have a flawed system and I also take issue with some of their practices from an ethical standpoint. For what it's worth, I think that Honda is an excellently-run company with whom I have had a pleasure working. Did they start from the ground up? In that case, I give them some more credibility (just a little though!) I wonder why they picked Cologne for a base instead of somewhere in the UK.
I stopped reading after this... What possibly was any good in USF1's 'business model'?? To fail in epic proportions? There is a reason why teams don't use the 'vastly different approach', because it simply doesn't work. Let alone that with one driver who barely has any relevant experience is hardly going to do any wonders. They would be FAR outside the 107% rule (if it still existed) and be lapped in a race within the first 15 laps. It was a stupid business model, because all they focused on was the following: 1) Base the team in the USA because carbon fibre was invented there 2) Allow fans to walk round an empty warehouse so they can look at 2 fat blokes in USF1 shirts doing transverse gearbox simulations 3) Selling the team to a non-existent person with to much money who thought it'd be better to buy USF1 than any of the other teams about
The thing is though, if Villeneuve is so eager to have another go at F1, why has he not offered his services to any other teams who were looking for drivers?. As for Stefan GP, apart from the fact that they seemed to have p****d the FIA off by trying to gatecrash the F1 party and bully their way in (as I have been saying for the last few weeks ), had they been allowed in this season, that would have made 13 teams this season and it's well known that the world of F1 doesn't like the number 13 (find a number 13 car in f1!). I suspect the FIA were glad to lose USF1 for this reason alone.
1963 Mexican Grand Prix. The triskaidekafearless Moises Solana in a BRM. Qual. 11th, finished same. Divina Galica attempted a similar feat at the British GP in 1976. Nick Whiting provided the Surtees but the attempt ended with a dnq. I know you'll all sleep better now .
Now that's My kind of girl! I should have said: "In recent history" in My post but I thought I might have got away with it (I really should have known better! ). Kudos Isobel, for catching Me out!.
I can't keep pace with you heavies on the latest technical advances or rule infringements, so I need to make the most of obscurities from the past. A niche vastly under appreciated I might add . This one was glaring at me for too many days. Let those Vultures fly!!!
Cologne was selected instead of the UK as Toyota's other motorsports division, Toyota Team Europe was already based there (although the facility wasn't up to F1 spec at that point) Initially the plan was to have the team in the UK in Norfolk at RTN (incidentally where Lotus is now) that fell through and the Le Mans winning Bentleys were later constructed there.
I wouldn't put any stock into any stories from Pitpass - the "reporters" are total hacks, and the guy that does their financial expose type stories is the biggest hack of them all. He has been wrong so many times, and is more about looking for dirt than about actually coming up with a real story. Better to stick with a real news site like Autosport, rather than those chumps.
