The Car Behind Is a Toyota: Why Their Loss Could Be Our Gain

The Toyota F1 team have been bullish about their prospects for 2009 over the winter, with the team making no secret of the fact that they are targeting race victories this season.

Preseason form has been solid for the team so far, with Toyota tipped to be among the top performers this year.

Qualifying in Australia seemed to bear this out, with only Brawn GP having a clearly quicker car than the Japanese team; Williams and Red Bull both looked strong too, but were on a par with Toyota rather than clearly ahead.

But then, hours after the session had ended, the race stewards announced that Toyota's drivers, Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli, were being stripped of their top-10 grid positions and demoted to the back of the field after the cars' rear wings were deemed to be illegally flexible.

The news will come as a blow to the team, with the drivers publicly stating last week that they were targeting a podium in Australia.

Such a result must now surely look out of reach.

However, for fans of the sport there is a bright side to all of this technical book-throwing, because it means that two of the fastest cars in the field will be starting at the rear of the grid.

Melbourne is traditionally a difficult circuit to overtake on; Felipe Massa struggled to fight his way through the field in a Ferrari in 2007 after starting well down the grid.

The Toyotas, therefore, will be the perfect test subjects for finally finding out whether the raft of rule changes for 2009 have actually worked to increase overtaking.

Given their exclusion from qualifying, Toyota will probably opt to put both their cars on a heavy fuel load and start them from the pit lane.

This will allow them to avoid the inevitable first-corner carnage, and give them a strategy that lets them run long into the race before making a pit stop.

This way, they hope, they will improve somewhat on their disastrous starting positions.

A heavy fuel load, especially on the softer tyres, will slow the cars down tomorrow, but Toyota should be able to catch the midfield teams even with this weight disadvantage.

Thus we will be able to see if they are able to pass as easily as has been hoped, or whether the rule changes have failed and the Toyotas will therefore be consigned to a midfield finishing position.

Neither Trulli nor Glock have been highlighted before as particularly outstanding overtakers; Trulli's racecraft in particular is excellent, his defence of position unrivalled by almost anyone in the field, but overtaking is not something either driver is renowned for.

Therefore if they are able to breeze past the opposition with ease, we will know that the regulations are working.

As the F1 world prepares for the first race of the season, all eyes might be on the mighty Brawn GP, but spare a thought for the team at the other end of the starting grid.

Victory for Toyota this weekend might be out of the question, but at least we will see whether the efforts of the Overtaking Working Group have delivered results.