Comments on: How Toyota got it wrong

By: Mussolini's Pet Cat

Mussolini's Pet Cat — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:39:31 +0000

what’s your point?

By: Platine

Platine — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:32:46 +0000

ABC of building a team

Be based in UK

Get best technical minds whatever it takes

Get great drivers whatever it takes

Dont let HQ get in the way, just give them what they need

I used to work opposite Toyota Euro HQ in Brussels, they had a huge banner for over a year with a pic of their F1 car and the slogan “Just Watch Us”, I bet they wish we hadnt.

By: Martin

Martin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:31:25 +0000

If MS had have gone to toyota they wouldnt have faired much better as the culture of toyota wouldnt allow MS to do the things he was allowed at Ferrari.
Schumacher was allowed to bring in people to the team that left to its own Ferrari wouldnt have done.
He brought Brawn, Rory Burne, and a host of others that have left the team over time, and as each has left so has some of Ferrari competitiveness.
Ralf never had the power and influence that Micheal did and probably extracted about as much as could have been from the toyotas.

BMW’s biggest Mistake was not staying with Williams and supporting them the way Mercedes did Mclaren in the early days.

By: theRoswellite

theRoswellite — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:15:26 +0000

” Jay Menon says:
November 6, 2009 at 1:31 am

It can be argued that the downfall of the big manufacturers could be down to too much involvement from the Corporate Headquarters, or could have been cultural differences that caused them to fall?”

…?…just a world economic recession, you can even use the “D”word, that’s all….otherwise they would be spending right along as usual…(same for Honda, BMW…Renault???)

By: Ethnic_Tension

Ethnic_Tension — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:06:06 +0000

Toyota is leaving for one simple reason – the world economic crisis. It has hit them harder than any other manufacturer. They’re only one step away from bankruptcy. They’re cutting away the fat and their F1 team is the biggest portion of it.

The problem all along was that they were not passionate about racing, rather trying to sell average cars to average people. F1 was simply a tool to increase their market share. Did it work? No.

To borrow a line from Albert Einstein ‘I have no special talents. I am passionately curious’. The same can be said about F1. Winning does not come with the ability to win, but with the passion to win.

By: wasiF1

wasiF1 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:32:41 +0000

Toyota had slipped many opportunity from their hand.
Sadly they are leaving when they had probably one of the best driver they could ever had in their team.

Feel bad for Kobayashi.

By: todd

todd — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:42:35 +0000

toyota shouldn’t have left, the should have restructured and become more agile.

cut everything in half (budget and resources wise), keep timo glock and their new fast japanese driver, they are both cheap and fast.

they should have analysed how the smaller teams were going to use their resources to compete, and then based their new model on a similar smaller more agile foundation and work from there.

they could have build a base like the small teams are for the small teams budgets ($40m), and then used an easy $60M more to out-do them on technical resources and other key areas. $100m is affordable compared to their $450m

they have a strong point scoring package already, using the current car as their base and re-structuring their resources around that to what smaller teams would have would put them leaps and bounds ahead of the smaller teams.

By: Jay Menon

Jay Menon — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:31:40 +0000

It can be argued that the downfall of the big manufacturers could be down to too much involvement from the Corporate Headquarters, or could have been cultural differences that caused them to fall?

Toyota’s failure could be a warning to teams that are starting from scratch. If you look at it,of the newer teams on the grid, Toyota is the only one that started scratch, everybody else was just bought over.

It will interesting to see how the newbies work out next year.

By: Mahir C

Mahir C — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:02:53 +0000

I was sad that Honda left last year(not now obviously, since it gave us brand new champion team). I could have been sad about BMW leaving if they hadnt tried that cheap trick that saying F1 wasnt relevant to sustainaible future yadayda. I would be properly sad if Renault goes away. I would rather see the name of a car company up there rather than a t-shirt or drink company. That said I am happy to see the back of Toyota, they wont be missed.

Toyota lost because they were bland, just like their road cars. They were never terrible or superb. There wasnt anything on their car which was the best in the paddock. Average aero, average engine, average suspension etc. Much the same with their road cars. They even hired bland drivers so that it suits the rest of the team.

Go to their wikipedia site, most of the stuff is about production system and management crap. Is this a car company we’re talking about? What did they bring to the automative world? They had no passion for racing and I’m not sure they have passion for cars either.

By: Ned Flanders

Ned Flanders — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:02:20 +0000

Aha, so there is more to it than translation, Toyota just don’t want to be associated with ‘fertile rice paddies’.

And obviously it’ll be easier for Japanese to read Japanese than me, but that doesn’t mean that Japanese text isn’t way more complicated than Latin. There are lines going all over the place!