F1 Toyota 2008 Season Review: Finally Some Progress Is Made

Team Principal- Tadashi Yamashina

Technical Director- Pascal Vasselen

Chassis- TF108

Engine- Toyota

F1 Debut- Australia 2002

F1 Points- 219

F1 Pole Positions- 2

F1 Wins- 0

F1 Fastest Laps- 1

2008 Stats

Wins- 0

Pole Positions- 0

Fastest Laps- 0

Podiums- 2

Points- 56

Season Highlight: Glock finishing second in the Hungarian GP and Trulli finishing third in Magny-Cours

Season Lowlight: Struggling in the wet conditions at Monza and both cars finishing outside the top 10.

Drivers

Jarno Trulli

Nationality- Italian

F1 Debut- Australia 1997

F1 Starts- 199

F1 Wins- 1

F1 Pole Positions- 3

F1 Podium Positions- 8

2008 stats

Podiums: 2

Points: 31

Championship Position: Ninth

Timo Glock

Nationality- German

F1 Debut- Canada 2004

F1 Starts- 22

F1 Wins- 0

F1 Pole Positions- 0

F1 Podium Positions- 1

2008 stats

Podiums: 1

Points: 25

Championship Position: 10th

After a couple of very disappointing seasons, Toyota finally made some progress in 2008, with some very respectable performances. This included two brilliant podium positions, one for Trulli and one for Glock.

Along with Honda Toyota have been F1’s biggest underachievers in recent seasons. A lot was expected of them when they first came into F1 in 2002. The results have been very poor however.

The big bosses at the top of the company clearly thought that F1 was straightforward. Build some great facilities and throw millions at the team, and the championship will be won. As they have found out succeeding in F1 is extremely difficult, and requires many magic ingredients other than financial power.

In 2005, Toyota started to make big leaps forward but this all fell apart in 2006 and 2007. In 2006, Toyota decided to make a late change to the Bridgestone tyres. This went against the design of the car which was being made for Michelins.

This angered technical director Mike Gascoyne. He soon left the team after being unhappy with the direction the team were taking.

The 2006 and 2007 cars showed flashes of speed but both had their problems. The 2007 car was very difficult and inconsistent to drive. Ralf Schumacher never adapted to the control Bridgestone tyre.

The chiefs at Toyota were desperate for improvement in 2008. They wanted to see that the team were capable at competing at this very high level.

Two key new additions were added to the team in 2008. The first was ex Williams employee Frank Dernie. He was brought in to help oversee the whole operation. Timo Glock was brought in to replace Ralf Schumacher.

A little bit of youth in the driver lineup was needed to help remotivate the team.

2008 turned out to be a strong season. In 2007 Toyota scored a miserable 13 points. In 2008 they scored 58 points along with their two podiums. They finished in fifth place overall in the championship and easily outclassed major Japanese rival Honda.

The 2008 car was a completely different beast and a step in the right direction at last. It was the first step in the right direction in fact, since Gascoyne left controversially before 2006 kicked off.

The car was far easier to drive. It was simpler to predict what it was going to do in each corner. The car was a lot easier to setup which made a huge difference. Stability was another key area in which the TF108 was far stronger than its predecessor.

The team realised that in the past two or three years the car had been going down the wrong road. The aim in 2008 was to get the car going back in the right direction and they seemed to be succeeding. Toyota looked at all the negatives aspects of the car and tried to solve them.

An even better plus point was the car’s ability to look after it’s tyres. These Bridgestone tyres had a tendency to grain very easily but the Toyota had a good grip on them. The only drawback of this attribute is that warming the tyres for that vital qualifying lap becomes more difficult.

This affected Timo Glock, who had great difficulty in qualifying in the first half of the season, but improved dramatically in the second half of the season.

Over the course of the season the Toyota was just over 0.5 seconds off the front running pace. In 2007, the Toyota was often over 1.0 second slower than the front running pace.

The team did a great job over the Winter to achieve this. In other seasons with this deficit Toyota could have fared even better.

However this car still had a few negative points. As improved as the car was the performance did vary too much from track to track. The back to back French and British GPs highlighted this issue.

The Toyota loved the smooth Magny- Cours track surface and thrived. Whereas in Silverstone the track is very bumpy, which the Toyota found difficult to handle.

In the rain the car was a real handful so Toyota struggled for results on wet weekends. Jarno Trulli could only finish 13th in the wet Monaco GP and struggled to 13th again in Monza.

Track temperature often played a major role in the team’s performance. The car’s ability to look after it’s tyres well ment it fared well on really hot weekends. Hot temperatures makes tyres grain quicker therefore easy treatment on the tyres is essential.

Being able to do this more efficiently than other teams made Toyota competitive in these conditions. Toyota were able to compete with the big guns in these kind of races.

It was a sweltering weekend in Hungary and this is where Timo Glock got his outstanding second place. In the humid conditions in Malaysia Trulli drove impressively to fourth position.

In cool conditions the team weren’t as competitive, and were sucked back into the midfield. Even on weekends like this though, Toyota were still normally strong enough to compete for points (providing it didn’t rain).

An area where Toyota had struggled in 2007 was race starts. A Toyota often lost two or three places off the line in 2007. In an era where overtaking is extremely difficult, it’s hard to recover from lost positions is near impossible. Getting bogged down almost effectively ruins your race.

In 2008, Toyota improved their race starts. Toyota were now gaining positions more often than losing them. This made a huge difference when challenging for points.

Jarno Trulli seemed to thrive in 2008. For him to be able to perform at his best he needs a car that is very consistent and has a good front end. He is a driver who has always struggled with graining on the grooved tyres. This season his race pace was perhaps the best it has ever been.

The fact that the car looked after its tyres well would have contributed towards this. Having a young hot gun in the other Toyota also pushed him to perform better and find new limits.

In Magny-Cours, he was quick and aggressive all weekend long. He was determined to hold off the much quicker Heikki Kovalainen in the last 10-15 laps. He didn’t crack under the pressure (as he had done many times in the past) and finished in a brilliant third place. This was probably the highlight of Jarno’s season.

In 2004, he lost a podium on the last lap at Magny-Cours. Clearly putting that particularly ghost put to rest was a big moment for Jarno. He got stronger as the season went on. His motivation has often been questioned, but he loved this Toyota and it was like seeing a new man at times.

Timo Glock had quite a difficult start to life back in F1. Jarno Trulli thrashed him in the first half of the season. Glock couldn’t get anywhere near his more experienced team mate’s pace. Qualifying was the main issue.

Jarno Trulli is an expert at qualifying. Therefore Glock had an automatic disadvantage when it came to the races. Glock was one of those drivers (along with the likes of Raikkonen and Heidfeld) who struggled to get heat into his tyres in preparation for a hot lap.

Trulli on the other hand didn’t, and had the ability to find an extra couple of tenths from nowhere when it mattered. The setup of the car also didn’t suit Glock so he worked hard with his engineer to get the car more adapted to his style.

In Germany, it all started to take shape as he had a strong run to sixth until a suspension failure.

Hungary was then the best point of Glock and Toyota’s season. The Hungary weekend suited the Toyota better than any event. It was a hot weekend which would demand a lot from the tyres. Bridgestone also went with a very aggressive and demanding tyre choice. With the Toyota’s ability to look after the tyres the scene was set for a strong weekend.

Timo Glock was now more at ease with the car and he was a factor all weekend long. He qualified in fifth and showed strong race pace to finish in second place. He needed a bit of luck with Massa and Hamilton’s incidents, but he raced at the front on merit.

Twenty-five points was a good final points tally in his first full year in F1. He ended up being one of the surprises of the year, after a very disappointing first half of the season.

Final Verdict

Toyota seemed a much more positive place to be in 2008. Toyota looked more like a F1 racing team, as did their car. Toyota took a big step forward and challenged for podiums, which is perhaps more than the team themselves were expecting.

Toyota now had two drivers who were pushing each other and had a positive influence on the team. Toyota perhaps didn’t have this during the last couple of seasons with Ralf Schumacher.

There will be some that say that Toyota should still be finishing higher than fifth in the championship. That is definitely true. However, compared to two dreadful seasons in 2006 and 2007, 2008 was far better. Toyota managed to earn back some of their respect.

Frank Dernie also helped change the team for the better. He used all of his experience from Williams and helped turn Toyota workers into racers, as opposed to members of a big corporate organisation which Toyota are.

When the conditions suited Toyota they were very strong indeed. Next season they need to try, and focus on being very competitive, in varied conditions rather than just when the track is very hot.

At least Toyota now have a platform to build on. It needs to be remembered that they had built this solid base in 2005 too, but went straight back downhill again.

Although I feel Toyota have learnt some very valuable lessons since then, and have a better understanding of what’s needed to be successful in F1 now. They are in a good position to become more competitive in 2009.