Well, given the start of my Toyota (yes I decided to really pull for the team this year) team I was a bit despondent. Id seen Jarno in the car at the 04 Suzuka race and his speed early in that race gave me what I thought was a flash of the future to come. I decided to pull for him in the 05 season. He didnt disappoint me and the Toyota team also won me over with their win at any cost approach. The fact that Ralph finished the season as well as he did further solidified my resolve in the teams abilities. Also add into the equation that I get into a little MR2 Turbo everyday, yea Toyota was going to be my team for this 06 season. So, where am I going with this? Well, this past week Toyota F1 have seemed to have turned it around. Yes, they did well in the last race. But a lot of that I put down to luck. In early season testing they were consistent. Consistently in the mid field or worse. Last year they were hit or miss if they couldnt get the tires to work at the track in question. This year they couldnt seem to get the new Bridgestones to work at all. Ferrari were doing well with them so it just must be Toyota. Anyway back to this week. They concluded their test at Paul Ricard, which has the closest surface type to San Marino, with the fastest time of the year (http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php ) at that track. Hmmmm . I thought that was very promising. Theyd been no more than a half second off the pace for the whole test week. Now Jarnos topped the sheets back in Barcelona (http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=27706 ). Could Toyota have pulled a McLaren and turned it around this fast? Well, everyone else is right behind him I thought. And they are. The first six are covered by no more than half a second and Alonso is only one thousandth of a second behind. But, to top two separate tests is not a simple feat these days. Then I took a look at the Best times to date listing below on the timesheet (linked above). Thats when I began to wonder if theyve actually gotten up to speed of the front runners. Take a look at the dates when the times were posted. Everyone elses thats posted a faster time was all the way back in February. Toyota has been making progress as has been Ferrari (theyre the next one up if you look at February times) followed by the others. Renault and Honda seem to be chasing their prior performance times. They should be going faster. What do you guys think?
I would really like to see Toyota win in F1, but I don't believe it until I see it. Having lost Gascoyne I can't imagine them going anywhere this year. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I doubt it. Renault > Honda > McLaren is the hacking order. Toyota might duke it out with Ferrari. I have said it before and I say it again: To me the biggest news of the first three races is that neither Renault nor McLaren had a single engine failure. And I think this season (just like last) is all about engine power and reliability (with the tires playing a less important role than last year).
I hope so, but as we seen in the past, testing times don't mean squat. But on the other hand you are right, Toyota has been mid to back of the pack this season in testing. I was quite surprized to see Trulli post the fastest time, along with the top three being bridgestone runners. So maybe bridgestone has gotten their act together and we may see Ferrari and Toyota the teams to beat at San Marino. Lets see what happens at San Marino.
Isn't it a strange place where Ferrari are? Two years ago, they were the reliability kings and Michael had something like 52 races without so much as a hiccup with his engine.
Good point. We all thought/hoped that Ferrari, a company known for its engines would be fast to get its act together on the new V8.
In some ways, I hope that they have cracked it, finally, and as my daily-driver is also a Toyota, well, its hard to not follow them. However, they seem to be really struggling from a 'results at any cost' mentality. First they hire Ralph. In my opinion, he has nowhere near the amount of talent that his brother has. He is good, but not exceptional. Again, in my opinion, a talented driver, but not a driver to lift the team to where it wants/needs to go. Trulli too is good, but not quite exceptional. In my rankings, Trulli on a good day is better than Ralph, but sadly his good days are few and far between. neither drive is quite good enough to elevate them. The Gasgoine saga is typical corporate BS, the car was not fast out of the box, so they fire the designer. Well its certainly showing some speed in testing, so, just maybe this was not a good move ? Toyota at the moment reminds me of Ford/Jaguar a team that is nowhere near the sum of its parts because of the corporate issues that it has burdened its self with.
