Toyota announces WRC plans

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Originally Posted by Mirek

I hope You are wrong. I can't imagine that to be true with just few weeks remaining before homologation process starts.

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It surely can't be true??? What a shambles if it is though....

They've had years preparing for a WRC return, so they've only got themselves to blame if they've f*cked this.

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Originally Posted by bluuford

Work with Japanese and you can understand it. My boss is Japanese ;) The most important thing is relationship another thing is good connections between Japan and their facilities in Europe. The shortest and the most comfortable flight you can take from Japan is to Helsinki. Basically you go to sleep (in the evening) in business class and you wake up in the morning;) add several more hours to mid Germany, and double it with return flight.. and now multiply it with staff number;)

This is very-very clear to me. At least 10 Japanese researchers visit our small institute every year and only one of them has bothered to proceed to centra Europe.

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I work with Japanese in Indonesia as well. It's only a 6 hour flight for them and the timezone is nice and handy. None of that is a reason to base a motorsport team here. Using your logic it should be in Japan.

Relationships, yes but only until your make them look bad. The relationship doesn't work well after that and they take no prisoners there.

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Originally Posted by Mirek

I hope You are wrong. I can't imagine that to be true with just few weeks remaining before homologation process starts.

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Chances are Central European hardcore rallying fans have failed to spy the tarmac tests or they have not tested on tarmac. I'm afraid I have to believe the latter more.

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Originally Posted by Simmi

Good info. A lot of cars and kilometres. But am I correct - still 0km of dedicated tarmac testing?

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As said they have 4 test cars. Do you believe that 1 of them is just lying in garage ? (one car was in Paris motor show, 2 in gravel test)

They have driven tarmac test in "Skoda country" with fast Estonian driver and I am really surprised that no photos are out. It was almost same when Skoda was testing S2000, no big publicity.

Jus count the numbers shown:

Total tests 12000
Juho 6000
Tommi 3000
Kalle 2 days and Mikko 1 day (+Nikara some km)
Who and were have driven almost 3000km ???

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Originally Posted by pantealex

They have driven tarmac test in "Skoda country" with fast Estonian driver and I am really surprised that no photos are out. It was almost same when Skoda was testing S2000, no big publicity.

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Fast Estonian driver on tarmac? Tänak is chained to M-Sport. That pretty much leaves Kruuda of the current drivers and from the former there's Märtin and Aava. And of those two Märtin should be significantly better than Aava. Other drivers really don't have enough tarmac experience or just aren't fast enough.

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Originally Posted by pantealex

They have driven tarmac test in "Skoda country" with fast Estonian driver and I am really surprised that no photos are out. It was almost same when Skoda was testing S2000, no big publicity.

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Did it really happen? I know there were some plans about that but that's all I know. Anyway there are areas here where You can test without public so maybe they were here.

MM Motorsport is hinted to be very much involved/in relationship with TMR (Gazoo), so my wild guess would be Märtin. And he is basically only competent tarmac driver in Estonia after Tänak.

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Originally Posted by cali

MM Motorsport is hinted to be very much involved/in relationship with TMR (Gazoo), so my wild guess would be Märtin. And he is basically only competent tarmac driver in Estonia after Tänak.

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I don't think it's even hinted when they are running the Toyota Junior guys in R5 Fiestas. It's there for all to see.

Pic or did not happen :-) Why on Earth they would want to keep it secret they have tested on tarmac? This approach is working against them. I was counting the kilometres too. Nikara did a few days too, Mikko one day (?). Something is missing, but it's still weird if chosen way is secrecy.

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Originally Posted by Hartusvuori

Pic or did not happen :-) Why on Earth they would want to keep it secret they have tested on tarmac? This approach is working against them. I was counting the kilometres too. Nikara did a few days too, Mikko one day (?). Something is missing, but it's still weird if chosen way is secrecy.

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Remember how long it took for some news to surface in English? And then in one of the first major interviews in English Tommi already started complaining about all the rumours floating around. Still when I look in this thread almost all the news and newspaper articles which contain first-hand information scome from Finnish media, presumably Tommi's mediafriends.

As an armchair-internet-psychologist it seems to me Tommi has control issues. He keeps everything as close to him as possible: the development of the car, the testing, the pr, even the location of his workshop. It appears to me he is hands on involved in every single aspect of the team. People who are like that have a tendency to keep everything as secret as possible so they can control when, where and how to release information.