Toyota might withdraw from F1
01/03/08 Toyota's high-spending formula one team risk being consigned to history unless they can get themselves into a consistently competitive position over the next two seasons. After six years with only two pole positions to show for their efforts, despite the international car manufacturer topping the sport's spending league with an annual outlay close to $500m (£252m), the Cologne-based team have been warned by their Japanese senior management that things must improve dramatically, a message which carries the inescapable threat that the future of the entire programme may be called into question and the team withdrawn from grand prix racing.
"I have been given two more years," said Tadashi Yamashina, the Toyota team principal, in the company's recently published motorsport report. "So we will work and fight to make sure we prove ourselves in the 2008 season."
This very public signal to Yamashina comes only a week before the unveiling of the team's TF108 challenger, which will be driven this season by the veteran Jarno Trulli and the rising star Timo Glock, the German who last year followed Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton to become the third winner of the GP2 championship, the supporting category to formula one.
The Toyota principal also took a thinly veiled swipe at his fellow Japanese under-achievers Honda, who have pinned their hopes of a performance upsurge on the signing of Ross Brawn, the highly regarded former Ferrari technical director, as their team principal. Yamashina professed that the solution to Toyota's ills lay in getting the most out of a wide range of staff rather than depending too much on one individual. "To become stronger it is more important to improve the level of organization in general rather than to rely on the power of one person," he said. "My job is to mobilize the resources to achieve that." Manchester Guardian