Toyota announces WRC plans

[Rallyper]

are these the only choices?

No but Tommie was questioned and runs atm Toyota Gazzo development of WRC17. Why wouldn´t he be allowed to test the car? Everyone questioned him hasn´t come up with alternatives for him.

[Rallyper]

Did You make that selection in purpose? How about those who actually worked on some car's development? Mark Higgins, Sebastian Lindholm, Raimund Baumschlager, Freddy Loix, Roman Kresta, Bryan Bouffier, Paolo Andreucci...

You don't need big names for making a good car because driving fast isn't the same as being able to develop a car. Many cars were developed by "nameless" drivers who never won anything with them.

Just like Dimviii I just don't have a good feeling about the whole Tommi's Toyota project even though I wish it all the best (also to Juho Hänninen).

You too Mirek? Tommie is one, maybe the one, perfect man testing the car for the moment. After that later on there will sure be others too. But questioning him is even respectless.

[Francis44]

Obviously too early to tell but the car looks slow compared to what I have seen by now for 2017. Also the fact that Tommi is only recruiting finns gives such a bad image, are the finns the only talent in the World?! Or is he recruiting everyone he is friends with so they can milk this cash cow dry?!

[Mirek]

You too Mirek? Tommie is one, maybe the one, perfect man testing the car for the moment. After that later on there will sure be others too. But questioning him is even respectless.

I didn't question Tommi. I did question You.

[seb_sh]

I think it's a bit knee jerky to focus on Tommi driving atm.

A. There are other test drivers
B. At this point they are just testing that everything works on the car together.

VW did something similar in the first tests with Gronholm.

And don't even get me started about judging the car's speed from the few videos we have...

I'm not with nor against Tommi but i do think its waay too early to judge. Of course, you can gossip.

[Rallyper]

"Mirek: Just like Dimviii I just don't have a good feeling about the whole Tommi's Toyota project even though I wish it all the best (also to Juho Hänninen)."

This is questioning. And like seb_sh says above it´s not time to question anything at this stage of the Toyota WRC project. And neither Tommie. Do we even know the drivers for sure? (maybe except from JH)

[Mirek]

"Mirek: Just like Dimviii I just don't have a good feeling about the whole Tommi's Toyota project even though I wish it all the best (also to Juho Hänninen)."

This is questioning. And like seb_sh says above it´s not time to question anything at this stage of the Toyota WRC project. And neither Tommie. Do we even know the drivers for sure? (maybe except from JH)

As I said, it's only my feeling. I didn't have a good feeling about initial VW tests as well. Time will tell.

[Rallyper]

As I said, it's only my feeling. I didn't have a good feeling about initial VW tests as well. Time will tell.

Now we can agree.

[janvanvurpa]

Now we can agree.

Yeah in a way I see a huge amount of the "conditions" being right...But that's from my viewpoint of some strange "home-sickness" for the woods up there and the roads..
The technical part---design--that as we've all said can be done anywhere there's electricity to run a computer: a guy can design a gear or a control arm and send the DWG file to the guy at the next desk or across the world with one click to somebody who does a FEA (Finite Element Analysis) and click and it goes to a CNC machinist who carves up a hunk of steel and makes it who can be down the hall or anywhere..

The troubling part is just this cultural part that somebody a page back said about some of the really good drivers who would just drive the car when its supposedly set up back and forth once and mumble OK, and then go and essentially "just drive it". Christain Lorioux said a long time ago in a very interesting and long article in Race Car Engineering that the problem in degigning a car for gravel was getting all the data needed and that was made harder because the best drivers "had a bad habit of driving around problems in the set up".
And they could not explain in terms he---the genius designer and engineer---could understand... (he contrasted this to developing a car for tarmac where the conditions are far more regular and the task so much easiser and with all the test and measurement stuff that could load onto a car, he could get all the data he wanted to make "all the decisions needed to make the car perfect and the driver's opinions or input was really not important" because as he said "They don't really understand all the systems in the car" SO WHO CARES WHAT THEY THINK."

So I wonder if the cultural thing of just how quiet the Finns are by nature, and how the culture emphasises basically "just shut up and drive" which Gronholm so perfectly said once time (when asked "What does it take to be a great WRC driver?" ) he said "Oh, that's easy! A BIG FOOT and an empty head! Ha! Ha! ha!"
Not that no analysis is done, but that so much remain un-said because the culture reinforces the quietness and silence.

And example from granlandet Sverige
(neighboring country Sweden):
I shared a garage with 2 Swedes who were very good riders, very good indeed..Top 5 Swedish Championship level back when Swedish Championship was considered harder to do top 10 than World Championship..
One evening all 3 of us were working on the bikes..I looked at the clock and noticed that we worked each on our own stuff for over 45 minutes and not one word was said.. Zero...
And Swedes consider Finns even quieter relatively.
And my experience shows that to be so..

I wonder if THIS kind of extreme individualism can be a problem for the whole project.

[Rallyper]

No, as TMG also contains japanese humans. (However I don´t know if they are quiet too, but some sort of communication needed in the way project is going) And once again. On this very early stage I suppose they need to test reliability also on the car besides handling.