Ignore those early test times!

[senna12]

Apparently when Gustav Brunner began at Toyota, he took one look at the current test car, and basically pronounced it a piece of ****! Thus he did absolutely no work on it, and went straightaway to designing the '02 effort, which is said to be substantially different in design from the current car, which was used primarily for testing internal parts and tires.
So anyway, how much better would you expect the new car to be than the current test car? Enough to put them in midfield straight away? Or will they be tooling around at the back of the grid all year?
Given Brunners reputation, is the motor the big question this year?
What do you think will happen with a completely different car? Can they force Honda into buying a team by performing above expectations?
What do you think?

[paulzinho]

I think that Honda will end up buying out one of the teams they supply, most likely BAR, in a couple of years.

I also think that when they arrive at circuits this year they will have knowledge of set ups and the drivers will know the circuits.

As for where they'll be I think its a case of wait and see what happens.

[BBKing]

I think the chassis wont be a problem for Toyota. Brunner had produced great ones for Minardi. Their problem will be the engine. I think they will work on reliability more than performance to minimize the "BAR" effect:embarrassing themselves in their first season.

Drivers? That is the big question.

[Nicholas]

Oh, I was hoping for some all-season entertainment. Why couldn't Brunner forget the money and stay at Minardi???

The drivers should be alright. Mika Salo isn't that bad, is he?

[PoweredByHonda]

Originally posted by nicholaswhite
The drivers should be alright. Mika Salo isn't that bad, is he?

well, let's just say this when BAR started they had a star in Jacques Villeneuve and they had 0 points...

[f1manoz]

Brunner produced some wonderfully designed cars at Minardi, and always had little aerodynamic tweaks to help the speed and handling, and I see no reason why he shouldn't do the same at Toyota.

There is a question mark over the engine, but Toyota won't be spending all this money to fall flat on their face. This a team dedicated and used to success, but they also know that it will take time to succeed in Formula One to be established teams. Remember how long it took for them to win in CART?

As for the drivers, it's now put up or shut up for Mika Salo. He's been offered a dream drive: a number one seat in what could turn out to be a brilliant end to a career. However, if he fails to deliver, it won't be a case of what could have been. It will be that it was all talk, much like Eddie Irvine!!

[Super Tourer]

After the Prost 'sham' of pre-season testing (where did all that 'pace' go -eh!)I think we will see a more realisitic testing programmes from the teams. With the limited testing I can't see that the teams will have time to 'sandbag' and muck about.

Toyota particularly, will really want to know exactly where they are in lap times. As they are a 'self' funded team, they won't have the charade of trying to impress potential or wavering sponsors. I am sure they know that running the car with thimble full of gas to set times will only catch up with them big time once the cars are wheeled out of the garages in Australia.

[Glen]

I think the engine will look promising, but be frustratingly unreliable in race conditions for quite a while.

As for the chassis design and aerodynamic package... sure, that may well be tidy and promising too - but it takes a hell of lot of experience and organisational integrity to provide and set up two perfect cars (well, three actually) every other weekend all summer long. In this department even Minardi will be ahead of them, and a team like Arrows will definately give them a run for their money. Look at BAR this year - big money, experienced team and they still produced a car that was unpredictable and hard to set up.

Toyota might beat Minardi and Prost, but anything more is a very tall order indeed.

[paulzinho]

I think that I have a possible explanation for those Prost times.

The fact is that they were times that would have been near the top in 2000. As we saw the tyre war meant that the top in 2000 meant about 18th in 2001. They looked quick pre-season but were in fact rather poor compared to the 2001 times but quick for 2000. Make sense?

[Super Tourer]

I take your point P, but I feel it was just a desperate attempt by Prost to secure some new partners/sponsors or owners for his team, with a 'look at what a great year we will have' type performance.