By Karl King
October 21 2005

Toyota reckon that the 2006 spec V8 engines will not be as much slower than this year's V10's as we think. After we reported on Panis lapping 3s off the pace of the V10 runners, we did not have high hopes for the RVX-06 V8 engine.

“On the final day Olivier did a 1m21.3s lap, as against a typical same car-spec V10 time of around 1m18s,” Toyota’s engine department boss Luca Marmorini told Autosport.

“That is already quite impressive when you consider that the engine is being run conservatively with something like 200bhp less, in an adapted chassis.”

After Panis originally seemed rather disappointed with the performance off the lower-specification engines, he agrees that there is more left to come from Toyota to get out of the machinery.

“That’s very good for the engine’s first run, because we weren’t operating it near its maximum potential,” he said.

“I would say that a time in the 1m20s region will be possible, and that the time difference solely down to the engine will be something like 2.3s to 2.5s on this circuit.”

“My first impression, not surprisingly, was that it was quite a bit slower than the V10,” said Panis. “You notice that the acceleration is not as strong and that the g-forces in the corners are less.

The French veteran then gave us something to think about...

“It even makes old men like me think about relaunching an F1 racing career!”

Marmorini confirmed Toyota's goals with the 8 cyclinder engine:

“In terms of power, the target is 80% of the best V10 power figures seen in 2005,” said Marmorini.

“Approximately, that means that we would like to see power figures between 730 and 760bhp by the start of the 2006 season.”

 Thoughts about the V8 from TTF1 members:

TF1911  the V8 sounds sick

LindaC   It's a sick idea!

JT-Fan  Yeah I really don't like it! Sorry to say but I think with that they are
            ruining F1.

           I mean...F1 = V10!

And Luke with his usual frank, to-the-point comments:

Luke     GET MAX OUT!