Toyota Sets The Stage To Exit Formula One

"Our work is done here, first place is over-rated anyways..."

— StarSearch (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 10:16:30 AM | reply to this comment | Votes: 6   

They did just that....

— Agent009 (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 1:42:24 PM | reply to this comment | Votes: 1   

This is no surprise.

— HSCenterconsole (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 10:25:47 AM | reply to this comment | Votes: 1   

Toyota had an F1 team?

— rocker (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 10:30:27 AM | reply to this comment | Votes: 1   

I'm confuse. "Howett said Toyota, who also provide Williams with engines..." Isn't Williams a BMW team. How is it using Toyota engine?

— Brembo (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 10:30:29 AM | reply to this comment | Votes: 2   

What??? Why don't you educate the rest of us on where you got that information?

I would venture to say that BMW, VW and even Mazda have far more impressive records than Toyota.

Now I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem right.

— Agent009 (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 1:44:19 PM | reply to this comment | Votes: 1   

Really?! Did I miss something over the last one hundred years of Toyota dominance? Get serious! Show some actual proof of your claims. Toyota cannot touch the storied motor sport histories of Ferrari, Porsche, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, and BMW over the last hundred years. I even give Subaru (Its rally history) more credit for its motor sport histor than Toyota. Peugeot is another car maker that easily outshines Toyota on the track. Stop the insanity dude!

— VISO (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 11:50:35 PM | reply to this comment | Votes: 2   

david may be exaggerating slightly, but toyota does have more experience in racing than most give them credit for.

with ace driver Ivan (Iron Man) Stewart, toyota practically OWNED off road racing for nearly TWO DECADES.

mainly chasing arch rival honda, toyota competed in CART and IRL, catching up and even winning amazingly fast.

a toyota powered car won the INDY 500 the very first year they entered.

then of course, there's craftsman truck and nascar.

— XYZZ (View Profile)

Posted on 5/12/2009 4:21:10 AM | reply to this comment | Votes: -1   

Williams hasn't been a BMW sponsored team for years...

This would kind of suck as Toyota has made some nice strides over the past few seasons...this coming from a Sauber/BMW fan!!

— asternmadkatz (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 12:31:48 PM | reply to this comment | Votes: 1   

Ok Agent009 I got my eyes on you. I thought for a moment you had a little more respect for the big Toy but, then again all true haters have one thing in common....envy. That my friend is an inevitable reality. Well, one thing is for sure and that is Toyota is going to bring it on with the LF-A even if they have to pull out of Formula 1 motorsporting. Those of us in the know know by now Toyota will not really profit money wise selling the LF-A. As much as they would have loved to have debut the LF-A after a winning season in Formula 1, they know the window of opportunity to enter the exotic rank is now. Trust me, the mistake they made with the 2000GT, under estimating it's significance will not happen on incoming president Akio Toyoda watch. By the way, the LF-A just so happens to be Mr. Toyodas heritage project so to speak. "How do you like them apples Agent009". Don't hate..congradulate!

— lexworld (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 2:27:54 PM | reply to this comment | Votes: 1   

Eight years in F1 and still haven't won even one race yet, whereas BMW and Red Bull Racing each have won at least one race and they're newer teams than Toyota. Goodbye Toyota, we will not miss you!

— F1_Driver (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 2:27:55 PM | reply to this comment | Votes: 0   

So let me get this straight... The governing body of formula 1 wants to get more teams involved, so they decide to introduce a budget cap for each team, which would give smaller teams a chance against the formerly big-budget teams. And as a trade-off, they have reduced the restrictions on car design, and this will allow faster cars.

So now Toyota, who presumably has invested lots of money in engineers that can work around all of the normally quite restrictive design requirements for F1 cars and tweak out that last bit of down-force, or reduce air resistance by a few newtons, is essentially throwing a fit and walking out because their ever engineers aren't as useful as they used to be.

This is all just posturing... Toyota trying to force F1 to back down. If they quit, they are still going to have to fire, or reallocate their engineers, so they really aren't saving themselves anything by quitting.

— holmstar (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 4:08:47 PM | reply to this comment | Votes: 1   

check for new updates in F1 sites. BMW, Redbull and Ferrari have joined Toyota, to quit F1 if rules don't change. Teams like Renault and Mercedes showed their unhappiness too.
It's FIA's president Max mosely who should quit and all problems will be solved.

JUGNU

— JUGNU (View Profile)

Posted on 5/11/2009 5:22:19 PM | reply to this comment | Votes: 1