MARCH 15, 2004

Gascoyne and Toyota

With a lot of the F1 circus in Asia and not much happening in Europe, some of the F1-related websites have been struggling to put up very much news other than notoriously dull team previews.

With a lot of the F1 circus in Asia and not much happening in Europe, some of the F1-related websites have been struggling to put up very much news other than notoriously dull team previews. Several however have decided that the poor performance of the Toyota must be blamed on someone and that this must mean that new technical director Mike Gascoyne will be fired. This is ludicrous.

Gascoyne joined Toyota on December 1 2003. He was thus not able to have any enormous impact on the design process because the new TF104 ran at Paul Ricard only six weeks after Gascoyne's arrival and it is fair to say that anyone who has any inkling of the production processes in Formula 1 these days would know that the design of the car would have to have been largely completed by August or September when Gascoyne was still (officially at least) working for Renault.

If anything the poor performance of the TF104 will strengthen Gascoyne's position as the current design team is obviously in need of help.

Small wonder that Formula 1 teams have so little time for most Internet journalists...