SPARKY: Sakhir Report – Way off target

I was all geared up for what I expected to be a five way fight for this years championship, Renault, McLaren, Honda, Ferrari and Toyota all up there chasing for victories. The opening race in Bahrain would set the scene, five teams all with a chance of victory bundling into the first corner, with hopefully Toyota out in front. Sadly, as winter testing predicted, Toyota were along way from the front of the grid.

From Friday right through to Sunday, Toyota failed to make any impression on the top three positions; seventh place being the highest the team would get all weekend in the final practice session on Saturday thanks to Jarno Trulli. Qualifying was a disaster, Ralf Schumacher out in the first of the three phases, then Jarno Trulli being the next to be booted out in the second, both Toyota’s beaten by Red Bull Racing, Williams and BMW-Sauber. So you’d expect the race to go a little bit better? Nope, using Sunday as a test session, Ralf and Jarno were sent out on two different strategies (Ralf on a three stopper, Jarno on a two) and still they failed to get in amongst the front runners, finishing way out of the top ten. I don’t know about you, but being out paced and beaten by a team which sells drinks in my local supermarket (Red Bull Racing) was a little irritating to say the least. There was even a point where the Toro Rosso of Scott Speed was side by side with Ralf Schumacher, a team built on the foundations of Minardi, operating what basically is last years Red Bull Racing RB1, pulling alongside a car which should be up there with Renault, McLaren, Honda and Ferrari. If you want a real kick in the teeth, it gets no heavier than that.

What Bahrain demonstrated quiet easily was that Toyota has gone backwards. The team which launched its car first, tested it first, upgraded it first, and doesn’t find itself heading the pack. Williams have a better package; their car well adapted to the Bridgestone tyres, their rookie driver Nico Rosberg going as far as setting the fastest lap of the race. Ferrari, another Bridgestone team, locked out the front of the gird and finished on the podium. Toyota out of the top three Bridgestone teams is the slowest, something we didn’t expect considering we tested our new car in order to learn from our new supplier. Honda has produced a very fast car, in Bahrain they were unlucky not to get a podium, but I can see them challenging very hard during the next couple of races. We ended 2005 ahead of both Williams and Honda (BAR) and have started 2006 behind; therefore these are our main targets for the first half of this season.

But the worst thing about this situation, which seems similar to the problem Ferrari suffered throughout 2006, is that Toyota is as lost as you and I are. It seems the car is too kind to its tyres, not generating the correct amount of heat and pressure to give the TF106 the grip it needs to take corners just that little bit quicker than it is currently. Yet, this isn’t a problem that’ll be solved overnight; it’s going to take time, time in the factory and time on the track. It’s going to take hundreds of laps on the testing track and hundreds of hours in the design lab. I have faith that the team will turn this around; the question is how and when.