Toyota return kicked up a gear

Suggestions of Toyota's mooted return to the WRC have been kicked up a gear, with President of the Japanese powerhouse's Motorsport Division, Yoshaiki Kinoshita, said that a return for the 2014 was a strong possibility.

“We hope we are ready in 2014. Of course the final target is the WRC programme, but to get back in WRC we need several steps.” said Mr. Kinoshita in an interview with Autosport magazine.

Toyota were a dominating force during their spell as a full works-backed team from the mid 80's through the 1990's. They started to become a regular challenger in the WRC with the Group B Toyota Celica TCT, and went on to claim four Driver's Titles and three Manufacturer's Titles in the space of nine years from 1990 to 1999 with various evolutions of the Celica and finally the Corolla WRC.

However, they were not with out controversy. Toyota were thrown out of the WRC for 12 months in 1995 when they were discovered to be competing with an illegal turbocharger. The offending units were able to be bypassed to create more power, and they utilised a clever system to fool the scrutineers and pass scrutineering.

Towards the end of the WRC programme, Toyota began to run a programme in endurance sports car racing with the GT-One in 1998 and 1999. The car was never really successful, combining technical failures and bad luck.

Both the rallying and endurance programme were ended when Toyota joined Formula 1. The F1 programme was not successful, with only 13 podiums out of 140 races in eight years.

Mr. Kinoshita said that the team would need time to prepare for a WRC comeback, but it would be possible to run a campaign in tandem with their fledgling endurance racing programme. But, the hardest part would be re-gaining all the knowledge required for a successful WRC campaign. Being almost 13 years since they last competed in rallying, most if not all their technicians and engineers would have gone on to different teams.

“Because we stopped [the] rally programme in 1999 and after that most of the people are gone, there is no know-how inside the company. What we need is to prepare engines, and homologated chassis, and build up our knowledge again. Then we are ready.” added Mr. Kinoshita.

The possible major problem may be getting the Yaris, their proposed base car, accepted by the FIA and rival teams. The Yaris is 15cm shorter than the FIA regulated minimum length of 3.9m.