Toyota lacking balance?

[Shifter]

After watching practice and quali at Canada...

Is the balance off on the Toyotas? I'm wondering if they've pushed the weight forward on the car only to find terminal understeer, and have had to shift the weight back to the rear of the car...it certainly would explain why Trulli has been spinning his like a top out on the circuit. If you look at Glock's spin in Monaco (turn 5), along with Trulli's quali spin in L'epingle, both times the back end simply whipped around with little or no provocation.

Pay attention to any Toyota that is hoisted away on a crane, let's see if the nose doesn't droop as low as on, say, Rosberg's Williams after his monaco hit.

[janneppi]

It was rather odd to see Trulli spinning, twice or three times in Quali? Not the best handling car it seems.

[Powered by Cosworth]

Trulli was all over the place in the practises, aye it was wet but he must have spun or got out of shape 4 or 5 times in one session, when only a couple of others got a bit iffy once.

[wedge]

After watching practice and quali at Canada...

Is the balance off on the Toyotas? I'm wondering if they've pushed the weight forward on the car only to find terminal understeer, and have had to shift the weight back to the rear of the car...it certainly would explain why Trulli has been spinning his like a top out on the circuit. If you look at Glock's spin in Monaco (turn 5), along with Trulli's quali spin in L'epingle, both times the back end simply whipped around with little or no provocation.

Pay attention to any Toyota that is hoisted away on a crane, let's see if the nose doesn't droop as low as on, say, Rosberg's Williams after his monaco hit.

They've seemed to have gone backwards with the car over the past couple of months because it started off as a decent midfield car.

I don't see what the car being hoisted on a crane will reveal? They're still running rear weight bias but its fractions. From what I've read some of the 06 cars were running something like 53% front bias and last year's cars were 55%.

Apparantly now there's very little little difference between last years and this years cars and they have to develop front end aero - which would explain how we've done away with the upper front winglet elements to a more complex upper wings which connect to the nose cone (such as the Toyotas and Ferraris) and of course the bridge wings.

Interestingly BMW are able to get away with a simple front wing setup compared to their rivals which probably tells you something about their incredible chassis.

[ShiftingGears]

Next time someone like Brawn or Willis is looking for employment, maybe Toyota should actually bid for them!

Ralf was openly critical of Toyota for not bidding for Brawn when he was on the market. Maybe it's the Toyota way of continuing to do what they've always done and hoping for better results.
In any case, they are woefully inept at turning their huge amount of resources into equivalent race results.

[jens]

Interesting speculation here. If I'm not mistaken, then the majority of teams have tried to move weight forward for this season to get more out of the control tyres. That's for example why Kubica shines more (as he prefers driving a car with more front-end grip) and Heidfeld struggles. You may guess that Toyota has actually moved weight forward too much?

The season started well, but it seems that after constructing a decent car the team has run out of ideas, how to develop it further. What I also think that as Toyota has often shown poor so-called adaptability, then I guess they couldn't adapt to those very difficult conditions in qualifying with poor track surface.

Also what can be noticed that Toyota tries to make the car more suitable to Glock, which is why Trulli is struggling more and more. Back in 2005 something similar happened - Jarno shined at the start of the season, Ralf complained and team listened more to him - as a result TF105B and TF106 were totally unsuitable for Jarno.

However, contrasting driving styles can't be an excuse for Toyota for struggling as they are not only ones, who have to deal with it. For example BMW's drivers have quite different preferences too, but this doesn't prevent the team from moving forward.

[ioan]

Maybe they need Ralf Schumacher to develop their car, again! :D

[Shifter]

Well, they looked allright during the race.

[aryan]

Ironic that Glock cost Truli's 5th place.

Well done to both drivers for obtaining valuable points, but in terms of speed, I wouldn't read too much into this race. Red Bull being able to run close to BMW's speed should be worrying signs for midfield runners.

[jens]

Wow, what a reward for a very hard weekend! Full satisfaction! :up: Just Timo should have been a team player and blocked Massa instead of Trulli after running wide. :p :

Surely Toyota lucked into the points, but what is important here that Toyota has basically never before got lucky points as they have failed to capitalize on attrition races. So IMO this is an important step forward and finally Toy had a smart strategy too!

About the pace. The first stint was worrying, even Sutil stayed in the Toyota group. :| However, Toyota had the heaviest fuel load of all and the second stint was encouraging (considering their performance this weekend) as Toyotas lapped faster than for example Barrichello's Honda. I hope this result gives the team an extra boost and they can find some pace in the future.