JUNE 15, 2005

Toyota and Jordan and Williams

The Toyota company is currently looking at what it intends to do in F1 in 2006 with an announcement expected in Indianapolis about a deal for Jordan to run Toyota engines again next year.

That might seem to exclude the possibility of the Japanese firm from doing a deal with Williams to use Lexus-badged Toyota engines, but our sources in Japan say that there is a possibility that Toyota might be willing to do a third supply of engines in 2006, in order to speed up development of the new V8 engines. This is not a stupid idea as the amount of F1 testing is nowadays so limited (unless you are Ferrari) that the work needed cannot always be done in the time available as teams need to do chassis development work, tyre testing, long-term systems development for new cars and driver evaluation tests.

This is becoming more and more of a problem for the teams and so a logical response, particularly when there are new engine regulations, is to expand to more teams. It goes without saying that the better the level of the cars involved, the more significant the engine development can be.