I commend NASCAR for having the foresight to start cost-cutting measures years ago. The CoT, eliminating test sessions, wind tunnel time, and more have allowed the sport to maintain a high level of competition while not locking out smaller teams.

"...The Toyota Formula One team, which is based in Cologne in Germany, has never achieved a race win in eight seasons in the sport but was regarded as one of the biggest spenders in the paddock."

Maybe, and this is only a suggestion, they could, um, build faster cars?

Or at least a cute blonde driver.


/yeah, she's happy to be here

Since when did Toyota represent all Japanese automakers? Anyone paying attention already knew this was coming. Honda bailed last year, neither had much to show for their supposed expertise.

They must have asked if they could pass a car this year, and Berine said no.

They left because its become more aparent as news leaks out over the past few years that its actually not a racing league but a fixed parade of technology. Hense why the good drivers left along with many "competators".


When you cant pass without asking your crew chief if its allowed, you dont have a sport.

foo monkey: I commend NASCAR for having the foresight to start cost-cutting measures years ago. The CoT, eliminating test sessions, wind tunnel time, and more have allowed the sport to maintain a high level of competition while not locking out smaller teams.

For all of those cost cutting measures there is still a huge difference between those teams that have money and those that do not. A lot of those smaller teams are nothing more than field fillers. Let's face it if you are not driving for Hendrick, or with his equipment, your chances of winning a championship are not all that great. When was the last time a team came out of nowhere to win a championship in NASCAR like Team Brawn did in F1 this year.

There is no place for "Green" in Formula One. Other racing series, yes. Formula One, no.

Also, I found where Toyota will be focusing its efforts from this day forward.

Belt Buckle Door Handles

Gonzo317: foo monkey: I commend NASCAR for having the foresight to start cost-cutting measures years ago. The CoT, eliminating test sessions, wind tunnel time, and more have allowed the sport to maintain a high level of competition while not locking out smaller teams.

For all of those cost cutting measures there is still a huge difference between those teams that have money and those that do not. A lot of those smaller teams are nothing more than field fillers. Let's face it if you are not driving for Hendrick, or with his equipment, your chances of winning a championship are not all that great. When was the last time a team came out of nowhere to win a championship in NASCAR like Team Brawn did in F1 this year.


One does not simply rock into mordor, and Brawn did not simply come out of nowhere. Honda put a ton of cash into the car, having started well into the previous season on development. Plus Ross Brawn was part of the Technical Working Group that shaped the rules [and he pointed out the double decker diffuser loophole at the time, too]

I don't follow napcar so i cant say anything regarding the rise of teams from lower ranks.

The last time it happened in F1 was Jordan when Eddie Jordan moved up from F3000. We'll have it again next season with Campos coming from GP2 and USF1 coming from nowhere [and is the team expected to fail to make grid in melbourne]

LonMead: "...The Toyota Formula One team, which is based in Cologne in Germany, has never achieved a race win in eight seasons in the sport but was regarded as one of the biggest spenders in the paddock."

Maybe, and this is only a suggestion, they could, um, build faster cars?

Or at least a cute blonde driver.


/yeah, she's happy to be here


Man hands.


and, from TFA:
Toyoda is the scion of the Toyoda family.

Ball of Confusion: Gonzo317: foo monkey:


The last time it happened in F1 was Jordan when Eddie Jordan moved up from F3000. We'll have it again next season with Campos coming from GP2 and USF1 coming from nowhere [and is the team expected to fail to make grid in melbourne]

Melbourne is the 2nd race next year, why would they make the 1st but not the 2nd?

Joe Saward has some additional insight at his blog (new window)

"The Toyota adventure in F1 has been a pretty poor affair, without a victory despite huge amounts of spending. The initial development of the team seemed to be promising, and the decision to hire Mike Gascoyne at the end of 2003 was widely seen as acceptance that Toyota had realized that a different attitude was necessary.

Unfortunately, the enforced retirement of Ove Andersson in 2004 (according to Toyota regulations) meant that the team quickly lost its way under the new management. Andersson stayed on as a consultant but was so frustrated that in the end he quit completely and retired to South Africa, where he was killed in a road accident in June last year.

The key point at which many in F1 lost faith in the project was when Gascoyne was ousted in March 2006 following a fundamental difference of opinion with the top management of the team about the way the team should develop. The split was indicative of the clash of cultures between the corporate world and the motor racing fraternity. Gascoyne was the epitome of an aggressive get-up-and-go engineer who was not frightened to speak his mind in corporate circles. His arrival at the team made a significant difference and his departure was seen in F1 circles as a victory of corporate thinking.

That move sent out all the wrong signals in F1 and meant that the team had real troubles recruiting top engineers as it was clear that Gascoyne was rejected for arguing too much for what he felt was necessary. The impression being that the team was being run from Japan by people who did not fully understand what they were doing with the European management simply doing what they were told."

mycatisposter:
Man hands.


To be fair, she is a professional race car driver. She can probably crush walnuts with her hands.

foo monkey: I commend NASCAR for having the foresight to start cost-cutting measures years ago. The CoT, eliminating test sessions, wind tunnel time, and more have allowed the sport to maintain a high level of competition while not locking out smaller teams.

The car of tomorrow didn't cut costs one bit for teams, it cost them a helluva lot of money to build new cars, a bunch of new cars. They have only eliminated testing at tracks where the big 3 series race. The big teams test as much or more now, they just have to go to other places, like Little Rock, the new half mile built outside the old Rockingham Speedway. They still test at Road Atlanta and the road course in Virginia. And a bunch of other little places you've never heard of.

Where teams have cut cost is employees, a lot of guys lost their jobs between last year and this year. Most teams have either suspended raises and stop putting money in employee 401k or like Richard Petty Motorsports they hire on contract so they don't have to offer benefits. RPM will also be laying most employees off for the offseason so they don't have to pay them, I doubt they are the only team that will do that.

Now Nascar is gonna stick the Nationwide teams with a huge bill to build the car of tomorrow in that series. Have you taken a look lately at the prize money those teams take in? Not enough to cover costs week to week.

Combine that with boring racing, sponsors leaving, TV ratings down, car companies in bankruptcy and less fans in the stands and I think it's safe to say Nascar has issues as well.

mycatisposter: LonMead: "...The Toyota Formula One team, which is based in Cologne in Germany, has never achieved a race win in eight seasons in the sport but was regarded as one of the biggest spenders in the paddock."

Maybe, and this is only a suggestion, they could, um, build faster cars?

Or at least a cute blonde driver.


/yeah, she's happy to be here


Man hands.


and, from TFA:
Toyoda is the scion of the Toyoda family.

Who is that chick?

Ball of Confusion: Gonzo317: foo monkey: I commend NASCAR for having the foresight to start cost-cutting measures years ago. The CoT, eliminating test sessions, wind tunnel time, and more have allowed the sport to maintain a high level of competition while not locking out smaller teams.

For all of those cost cutting measures there is still a huge difference between those teams that have money and those that do not. A lot of those smaller teams are nothing more than field fillers. Let's face it if you are not driving for Hendrick, or with his equipment, your chances of winning a championship are not all that great. When was the last time a team came out of nowhere to win a championship in NASCAR like Team Brawn did in F1 this year.


One does not simply rock into mordor, and Brawn did not simply come out of nowhere. Honda put a ton of cash into the car, having started well into the previous season on development. Plus Ross Brawn was part of the Technical Working Group that shaped the rules [and he pointed out the double decker diffuser loophole at the time, too]

I don't follow napcar so i cant say anything regarding the rise of teams from lower ranks.

The last time it happened in F1 was Jordan when Eddie Jordan moved up from F3000. We'll have it again next season with Campos coming from GP2 and USF1 coming from nowhere [and is the team expected to fail to make grid in melbourne]

I understand what you are saying, but the fact remains that you would have been laughed out of the room at the end of last season if you had said that you think that they would be world champions next year. Hindsight is 20/20 and it is easy to see why they won now. But if you look at it from the perspective of Feb. 2009, Brawn did not have anywhere near the budget that Ferrari or McLaren had. Honda dropped the team at the end of last year and it's not like Honda's performance prior to leaving was all that outstanding to start with. They had no major sponsor. All of it adds up to very long odds of winning a race, much less a world championship.

Well, at least this puts BMW Sauber back on the grid.

Although part of me was hoping they'd let 28 cars show up for 26 spots on the grid and actually bring back the DNQ.

Adolf Oliver Nipples: You reap what you sow, Bernie.

In all of my years of watching racing, I have never seen a racing organization so big and so powerful collapse under its own weight like this. At least CART had the excuse of having to compete with the IRL. Formula One has no competition whatsoever.

Put the blame right where it belongs, on Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley. They killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.

The IRL was on the verge of collapse just like cart thanks to george, he was the reason open wheel racing died in USA in the first place when he decided to take his ball and play alone. So he basically had the biggest open wheel race of the year with shiatty drivers or at the least cart cast offs.

Tony George is the biggest horse's ass in all of racing, when cart wouldnt meet all his demands he tried to kill them and ended up killing all the popularity they sport had built up during the 25+ years. CART would still be huge if it wasnt for Tony farking it up, now they had to merge just to survive otherwise there would be no open wheel racing in the USA.

But bernie deserves some blame for charging so much to have races, you have one of the largest spending markets so you shouldnt try and force them to pay the huge amount for the race, if anything you should pay them since it would have come back to the league 10x in revenue from TV and free advertising.

In the past 15 years we have had to ego maniacs try and kill off open wheel racing, maybe we can bondage up bernie and tony then let some bull biatch work on them for a few hours.

NVM, bernie would like that

realityVSperception: Joe Saward has some additional insight at his blog (new window)

"The Toyota adventure in F1 has been a pretty poor affair, without a victory despite huge amounts of spending. The initial development of the team seemed to be promising, and the decision to hire Mike Gascoyne at the end of 2003 was widely seen as acceptance that Toyota had realized that a different attitude was necessary.

Unfortunately, the enforced retirement of Ove Andersson in 2004 (according to Toyota regulations) meant that the team quickly lost its way under the new management. Andersson stayed on as a consultant but was so frustrated that in the end he quit completely and retired to South Africa, where he was killed in a road accident in June last year.

The key point at which many in F1 lost faith in the project was when Gascoyne was ousted in March 2006 following a fundamental difference of opinion with the top management of the team about the way the team should develop. The split was indicative of the clash of cultures between the corporate world and the motor racing fraternity. Gascoyne was the epitome of an aggressive get-up-and-go engineer who was not frightened to speak his mind in corporate circles. His arrival at the team made a significant difference and his departure was seen in F1 circles as a victory of corporate thinking.

That move sent out all the wrong signals in F1 and meant that the team had real troubles recruiting top engineers as it was clear that Gascoyne was rejected for arguing too much for what he felt was necessary. The impression being that the team was being run from Japan by people who did not fully understand what they were doing with the European management simply doing what they were told."

My neighbor used to work for TRD and my BIL works for a racing components supplier and independently they've both said the same thing for Toyota.

The Japanese Automotive culture, and specifically Toyota's culture and the F1 Racing culture are like oil and water. In the beginning, Toyota threw tons of money at top talent to get them to go over there, but eventually when people saw how miserable it was to work over there and then some "big name" people got tossed...nobody with any talent wanted to work there and get treated the same way.

Which BTW, is pretty much how it is working for Toyota in the States. If you've come up through the Toyota organization and you don't know any different, it's all cool...but the few people that I've known who left other auto companies for Toyota couldn't have gotten out of there fast enough.

steamingpile: Tony George is the biggest horse's ass in all of racing

Truer words have never been written.

NYRBill: Since when did Toyota represent all Japanese automakers? Anyone paying attention already knew this was coming. Honda bailed last year, neither had much to show for their supposed expertise.

Let's be fair here. Toyota and Honda have done pretty damn well at the real game - selling cars. That's what all this shiat is about at the end of the day. The racing is a sideshow.

Not a sport.

Daredevil activity.

Takes guts to do it.

But not a sport.

Gonzo317: I understand what you are saying, but the fact remains that you would have been laughed out of the room at the end of last season if you had said that you think that they would be world champions next year. Hindsight is 20/20 and it is easy to see why they won now. But if you look at it from the perspective of Feb. 2009, Brawn did not have anywhere near the budget that Ferrari or McLaren had. Honda dropped the team at the end of last year and it's not like Honda's performance prior to leaving was all that outstanding to start with. They had no major sponsor. All of it adds up to very long odds of winning a race, much less a world championship.

Honda did drop the team at the end of the year, but their agreement with Brawn was that they (Honda) basically paid for the year's expenses. About $160mm from what I've heard. Not quite the massive budget that McLaren or Ferrari have (and even those are coming down), but certainly not pocket change.

As for Toyota, they have spent $2.4 BILLION dollars over the past eight years and have no wins and only a smattering of podiums. Unfortunately, this has shown what I have always felt was a huge downside to their approach to Formula 1 (and Honda's as well): That you can't manage an F1 team by committee. You just can't do it. The goalposts move too quickly and the coordination needs to be much more precise than such a bureaucracy allows.

At least Honda got A win out of it. Toyota didn't.

F1 will be better than ever without those big budget wasteful teams. Next year will be entertaining, to say the least.

bluorangefyre: steamingpile:
Tony George Brian France is the biggest horse's ass in all of racing

FTFY

Brain's a dick but Tony has him beat, when you kill your sport just to placate your own ego then you win in the ass competition.

It was close to being on network TV every week so he decides to split it and take a lot of the sponsors with him while all the really great drivers stayed in CART or went to F1. I loved all the IRL fans that said they had to come back, ummmmmm no, IRL was just as dead and if the merge didnt happen then both would have been dead, that happens when you only have 30% of the seats sold.

Some day, Jenson Button will race in NASCAR.

RIP Formula One

Watching a parade gets boring pretty quick.

"...The Toyota Formula One team, which is based in Cologne in Germany, has never achieved a race win in eight seasons in the sport but was regarded as one of the biggest spenders in the paddock."


In other words, Toyota is (was) the New York Mets of Formula One.

FirstNationalBastard:
At Talladega last weekend, even the drivers were bored and wanted no-doz until the last 30 lap wreckfest began.

Restrictor plates.

bluorangefyre: steamingpile:
Tony George Brian France is the biggest horse's ass in all of racing

FTFY

More competition in this line than on any of the tracks

Orgasmatron138: Not a sport.

Daredevil activity.

Takes guts to do it.

But not a sport.

Ernest Hemingway disagrees.

bottsicus: Orgasmatron138: Not a sport.

Daredevil activity.

Takes guts to do it.

But not a sport.

Ernest Hemingway disagrees.

Dont argue with lesser men about racing being a sport, they will never understand, maybe their balls just havent developed yet.

YonderScott: foo monkey: I commend NASCAR for having the foresight to start cost-cutting measures years ago. The CoT, eliminating test sessions, wind tunnel time, and more have allowed the sport to maintain a high level of competition while not locking out smaller teams.

The car of tomorrow didn't cut costs one bit for teams, it cost them a helluva lot of money to build new cars, a bunch of new cars. They have only eliminated testing at tracks where the big 3 series race. The big teams test as much or more now, they just have to go to other places, like Little Rock, the new half mile built outside the old Rockingham Speedway. They still test at Road Atlanta and the road course in Virginia. And a bunch of other little places you've never heard of.

Where teams have cut cost is employees, a lot of guys lost their jobs between last year and this year. Most teams have either suspended raises and stop putting money in employee 401k or like Richard Petty Motorsports they hire on contract so they don't have to offer benefits. RPM will also be laying most employees off for the offseason so they don't have to pay them, I doubt they are the only team that will do that.

Now Nascar is gonna stick the Nationwide teams with a huge bill to build the car of tomorrow in that series. Have you taken a look lately at the prize money those teams take in? Not enough to cover costs week to week.

Combine that with boring racing, sponsors leaving, TV ratings down, car companies in bankruptcy and less fans in the stands and I think it's safe to say Nascar has issues as well.

I wasn't sure if foo monkey was being sarcastic at first, but now I'm pretty sure he was.


steamingpile: NVM, bernie Max would like that

FTFY

barneyfifesbullet: RIP Formula One

Watching a parade gets boring pretty quick.

does anyone in this thread actually watch F1? when you mandate the specs of the cars to the nth degree you can't expect much overtaking. narrow twisty tracks don't help either. this year 2 teams had KERS but even that wasn't perfect. in the last race Button was passed on the long straight in a brilliant bit of driving.

NYRBill: does anyone in this thread actually watch F1? when you mandate the specs of the cars to the nth degree you can't expect much overtaking. narrow twisty tracks don't help either. this year 2 teams had KERS but even that wasn't perfect. in the last race Button was passed on the long straight in a brilliant bit of driving.

Yes, some of us do. Furthermore, I agree with both you and Adolf Oliver Nipples when he said that Mad Max and Bernie have killed the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Perfectly regulated mediocrity is still mediocre.

Formula 1 has survived since 1950 without a Japanese team and will endure, I hope, without Toyota. I think things will improve with Jean Todt relieving Herr Mosley as President.

SniperJoe: Perfectly regulated mediocrity is still mediocre.

bring back this:

Porsche914: Formula 1 has survived since 1950 without a Japanese team and will endure, I hope, without Toyota. I think things will improve with Jean Todt relieving Herr Mosley as President.

Psst... Honda F1 (new window)

NYRBill: bring back this:

If they bring that back, they have to bring this one back too.

SniperJoe: NYRBill: bring back this:

If they bring that back, they have to bring this one back too.

ok, how about this as well? the Lotus 56

What's amazing is how all three of the big motorsports got farked - in different ways - all about the same time.

Victoly:

I wasn't sure if foo monkey was being sarcastic at first, but now I'm pretty sure he was.



;)