Toyota announces WRC plans

**MikeD** · 18th October 2016, 11:15

Hänninen? Are they serious? obviously not. I unfortunately knew that Mäkkinen would make it finnish nationalism over quality.

Pathetic choice!

**Rallyper** · 18th October 2016, 11:18

Originally Posted by MikeD

Hänninen? Are they serious? obviously not. I unfortunately knew that Mäkkinen would make it finnish nationalism over quality.

Pathetic choice!

Who would you have preferred? Why do you think Hanninen is the first of the official names? There are more to come. Maybe surprises.

**N.O.T** · 18th October 2016, 11:21

Originally Posted by MikeD

Hänninen? Are they serious? obviously not. I unfortunately knew that Mäkkinen would make it finnish nationalism over quality.

Pathetic choice!

We are talking about a guy who has posters of himself driving a rival manufacturers car on the OFFICIAL GARAGE OF TOYOTA TEAM, what did you expect ? Garbage dog without an owner playing team manager. He flopped his production cup team and moved on to flop bigger and more official stuff now.

Imagine if you were an owner of a company and the manager you hired has posters of a rival company in your bussines because he was successful with them.

And the Toyota people are worthless enough not to say anything, lets see when this farce flops and laugh.

**MikeD** · 18th October 2016, 11:32

Originally Posted by N.O.T

We are talking about a guy who has posters of himself driving a rival manufacturers car on the OFFICIAL GARAGE OF TOYOTA TEAM, what did you expect ? Garbage dog without an owner playing team manager. He flopped his production cup team and moved on to flop bigger and more official stuff now.

Imagine if you were an owner of a company and the manager you hired has posters of a rival company in your bussines because he was successful with them.

And the Toyota people are worthless enough not to say anything, let's see when this farce flops and laugh.

Without a doubt it has failure written all over it. But Toyota has been a level below pathetic in all kinds of Motorsport in this millennium. It's been failure after failure and giving up all kinds of attempts before they had any chance to succeed. But I guess their WRC project this time will take the price for the most stupid and useless attempt.

**Rallyper** · 18th October 2016, 11:41

Originally Posted by MikeD

Without a doubt it has failure written all over it. But Toyota has been a level below pathetic in all kinds of Motorsport in this millennium. It's been failure after failure and giving up all kinds of attempts before they had any chance to succeed. But I guess their WRC project this time will take the price for the most stupid and useless attempt.

Please you must be more explicit in your thoughts. Not just throwing words.

**Sub_Skoda** · 18th October 2016, 11:51

Good news for Juho. No surprise, but good news for him.

**Mirek** · 18th October 2016, 11:52

Originally Posted by Rallyper

Please you must be more explicit in your thoughts. Not just throwing words.

Per, even the blind must see that there is something wrong with the Toyota team. As people say there's no smoke without a fire and there has been a lot of smoke going from Mäkinen's team. We all saw all kinds of strange things one can imagine somehow happening with the team. I can only hope it won't end in an epic failure but frankly I am not very optimistic.

Anyway fingers crossed for Juho.

**Rallyper** · 18th October 2016, 12:13

Once something´s being said enough many times it becomes a truth. Mirek - you also started to believe before all is settled and done.

**Allez Andruet** · 18th October 2016, 12:18

Hänninen probably was the best one available for this assignment (2016 testing + 2017 full season). Let's keep in mind that Mäkinen tried to sign Meeke for this role first (atleast it was strongly rumoured), but once he decided to stay at Citroen, Hänninen was the obvious choice.

You don't win the titles Hänninen won (IRC, PWRC, ERC) by accident, so the talent is there. In his WRC drives to date, he's had some quite good (2013 MC, 2014 IT, PL, FI) and some subpar perfomances (2013 FI, 2014 PT, GB), but the "good result" hasn't materialized so far. Let's hope 2017 changes all that.

Let's see what the pace of the Yaris WRC will be... you can say that it looks slow on some videos - it's hard to argue that, but so did the i20 WRC back in late 2013 when the first test videos appeared... I guess we'll have to wait till MC to find out.

For sure Toyota is an underdog for 2017, but if the car is anywhere near its rivals, they're atleast a live dog with Hänninen and Lappi (and whoever the third driver will be).

**Mirek** · 18th October 2016, 12:22

Originally Posted by Rallyper

Once something´s being said enough many times it becomes a truth. Mirek - you also started to believe before all is settled and done.

Name any successful team which managed to change the complete team structure, the team location and the car design during the development phase, which managed to change technical director again after all those changes which took place before. Add to that questionable all-Finn structure, an obvious cult of Tommi's personality, missing top drivers on the market (or missing effort to steal top drivers from other teams) or not very convincing test footage. How can anyone be optimistic about the result is beyond me but I admit I will be very happy to be proven wrong.