Many changes for 2006 then – probably too many changes for Toyota, still being a reasonably young team. V8s were in traduced and at the same time we changed from Michelin to Bridgestone. The combination of the two yielded into a situation where we struggled to understand where the lack of performance was coming from, whether it was the car, the engine, or the tyres – or the lack of their understanding at the time. Hindsight tells me that it was probably a bit of everything, but certainly, Toyota’s V8 was not at the same level, the V10 had been up to that moment, and in general, we were probably a little bit too ‘Japanese’, which in this concern means that we were to honest. While everybody developed their engines massively over the time, we mainly stuck to the word of the regulation, only working on reliability. A problem which affected the whole program from that moment on, even if, in 2009, we came back onto the podium for another 5 times with a very good car and, as I see it, an average engine. The team had evolved over the years as well to provide consistent performance and development over the season and the whole team, including the facility in Cologne was ready to make the next step, but Japan decided to pull the plug. Really a pity, since the know-how and infrastructure, which has developed over the years was really at a very good level – good enough to support quite a few other teams after 2009, mainly using Toyota’s wind tunnels and aero people.
So, ultimately, 2006 was a rather disappointing year. Mike Gascoyne had to pay for that and was sidelined after a stumbling start of the season, but that did not really affect things in a positive way. 2007 and 2008 were very average, but still with the team evolving and having some people with brilliant ideas. We were one of three teams with the infamous double-diffusor for 2009, which put us again in a position to fight for podiums and race wins. As I mentioned earlier on, we did not manage to get that race win, mainly, in my view, because the engine was not good enough. But I only understood that in my experience with Lotus, seeing the Cosworth engine, but mainly comparing to the Renault.
The Toyota F1 experience concluded with 13 podiums, 3 pole positions and 3 fastest race laps in 139 GPs – as mentioned earlier on, I only missed two of them.