NOVEMBER 16, 2001

Brunner's Toyota to have Minardi influence?

FORMULA 1 designers tend to develop themes these days and so there has been speculation in recent months that Gustav Brunner's Toyota F1 car, which will be ready to run for the first time just before Christmas, will probably have a strong flavor of Minardi about it. Brunner worked with the Faenza team for three years before defecting to Toyota in the Spring and it would not be a surprise to see him developing some of the ideas he instituted in Italy on the new Toyota, the team clearly having a rather bigger budget than Brunner was working with at Minardi.

It is expected that Toyota will probably be quick to develop an all-titanium gearbox, which Minardi has been running this year and which has been described by other F1 engineers as "a work of art".

The only problem for Toyota is that the car should not bear too much resemblance to the 2001 Minardi as team boss Paul Stoddart is already unhappy with the way Toyota and Brunner behaved and would be less than happy to see a Minardi lookalike chassis.