TOYOTA have started the way they mean to finish up, sooner rather than later. The team were first to run the new TF106 car that will contest the 2006 Formula One season, as far back as November, when the rest were still getting their breath back after an exhausting and dramatic year. And they were at it again this weekend, being the first team to launch formally and reveal their plan for the rest of the new year.
Not that the plan is particularly complicated, for it is simply to register Toyota’s first victory after four largely lacklustre years in Formula One. But the intent is greater than ever. It is no accident that Toyota now outspend Ferrari, with a budget reckoned to be about £350 million a year, for the Japanese carmaker is desperately ambitious to make its mark, so much so that Mike Gascoyne, the team’s British technical director, was talking at the launch about having another new car ready to race as early as the Monaco Grand Prix in May. That represents an astonishing schedule, even in the high-speed world of Formula One.
“It is a measure of the pace that you need to develop,” Gascoyne said. The Norwich-born technical director is said to be the highest-paid boffin in the pitlane, on about £5 million-a-year — as much as many of the top drivers. But he is clearly worth it, making the team a consistent front-runner in 2005 with five podium finishes for Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli and giving the team their best year, finishing fourth among the constructors. Now the last push is for victory and to challenge Renault and McLaren Mercedes.
Ralf Schumacher thinks Toyota already have a head start by having their TF106 up and running ahead of the rest. “We have a lot of work to get through but our testing in the next few weeks will mean we go to the first grand prix at Bahrain ready to compete and get points,” he said.
Toyota were first off the mark but the rest of Formula One start to roll out their new cars thick and fast. BMW show off their new team — since buying the former Sauber outfit — today, with Ferrari and Honda, formerly BAR, ready to launch along with Williams in the next week.