This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: Toyota On Target Jaguar Continue to Struggle

Toyota On Target

There are few who would claim that Toyota's first couple of years have set the world alight, but so far, the team have been quietly getting on with the job of turning into a competitive outfit.

From the outset, the official line has always been one of fitting in. The goal for year one was to validate the entry with a performance that belonged on the grid. Scoring points in the opening races made it clear that the team were not playing in the wrong league, and despite a couple of particularly weak races, the Toyota was not the worst car on the grid. However, it was plain that they were making more mistakes than their competitors, and failing to maintain the rate of development throughout the year. Privately, the board were pleased with the first year, as the team had met expectations, built a great reputation for the engine, and put into action a plan for improving results over the next year.

Heading into the second year, there was a tougher objective - as a measure of progress, Toyota needed to be seen to compete against the midfield teams. More importantly, from the board's perspective, the mistakes of the first year had to be demonstrated as learned, with sufficient in-season development on the car to stay on the pace of the midfield. Having brought Gustav Brunner on board, the package was far stronger, but it was only enough to make the team an average midfield runner. Bedding in two new drivers helped - their relatively lacking experience of the car or team provided room for a slow start to the season. In the event, the TF103 turned out to be a reasonable car. It was fast, with a good engine and respectable chassis, but not quite as slippery as some, and troubled by bumps. The drivers came together well, and the car was developed: by the end of the season it could reasonably be argued that they had shown better progress than Sauber. However, it was clear very early that there were two areas in serious need of attention - reliability was a major bugbear for the team, as was the lack of a chassis that would handle bumps well.

Bringing Mike Gascoyne on board fills a huge gap in the Toyota portfolio. The man has a talent for chassis design that has been manifest in multiple teams - though there has been the odd problem year. His arrival at Toyota is arguably too late in the design process for them to make the best use of his skills for the TF104 - his important role will be for the 2005 project - but he is still expected to have considerable impact. Not only will his insight into the issues of the chassis go down well, but there is a heap of quality control experience that should help to bring the team's reliability up to scratch.

Ambitions for 2004 are already established. The car has to be a more consistent performer, in terms of both pace and reliability. A solid finishing rate is absolutely vital under the new rules, which punish unreliable teams heavily, so the aim is to get the finishing rate over eighty percent (up from sixty) - or in other words, each car is to finish at least fourteen of the seventeen races. With the changed requirements from engines, which must now last the whole weekend, this is being seen as a tough, but achievable target.

The performance goal will arguably be more difficult to achieve, however, as the team are aiming to score points from a majority of the races. Seventeen points finishes - twice as many as in 2003 - would not only guarantee beating the sixteen scored in 2003, but by denying those points to their mid-field rivals, would bring them up the table to sixth place in the Championship. Including the ambitious aim of a podium finish puts fifth place overall as the respectable goal for the season ahead.

Work on the new car has progressed largely to plan. There have been issues with components failing during unit testing, which has resulted in some re-working to improve tolerances - but that is the point of the tests: the later in the design process a component is discovered to be inadequate, the longer it takes to resolve. Leveraging the experience of preparing for the last two seasons, the car is not only on schedule, but the step forward is fully expected to provide Olivier Panis and Cristiano da Matta with the platform to fulfil all the team's ambitions for the year ahead.

Jaguar Continue to Struggle

In contrast to the quietly progressive off-season of Toyota, things do not seem to be going so smoothly at Jaguar.

The surprising pace of the 2003 car in qualifying trim had put some considerable spirit into the team. With performances like that, it seemed that things were very much on the up. Of course, it turns out that on those occasions when the car was fantastic in qualifying, it was also chewing up the tyres, so the pace was completely unsustainable. The blame for this was largely put down to the aerodynamics being inadequate: whilst admirably slippery, there was too little downforce at the back of the car. Work through the season improved this, helping alleviate the tyre wear when it was usable, but this was mostly impractical, as the front downforce no longer matched, upsetting the balance of the car.

Adding to the off-season woes, things are just not going to plan. The budget for 2004 is looking decidedly short, which has led to a far more frugal off-season than anyone wants - and it has impacted the money spent on putting a new car together. Alexander Wurz' decision to remain a test driver for McLaren rather than race for Jaguar has been something of a blow to morale. When the Austrian driver looked set to join, it was seen as a positive step for the team, bringing on board considerable experience and a driver who has demonstrated respectable pace in the past. Losing him for a driver whose biggest attribute is expected to be the cash he brings to the team, rather than development experience, has been a big blow to the engineers, who were looking forward to doubling the decent feedback.

Designing for 2004 has revolved around improving the packaging around the new engine, and resolving the issues at the heart of the tyre problems. The whole suspension geometry has been revisited, aiming for a solution that is easier on the tyres, without giving up too much bump and rebound control. The aerodynamicists have been freed from concentrating on rear grip alone, in order to return to the 'whole package' concept: besides the revised rules for the dimensions of the car, the new engine packaging completely changes the space it occupies, forcing the whole rear end of the car to be redesigned. The crushable structures (for side impact) have been improved, and the radiator requirements have changed, so the sidepods are also in need of attention. And, of course, the whole front end of the car needs to be fine tuned to feed the airflow around the rest properly. The bad new is, the new car is going to have more drag than the old, without a massive increase in downforce.

Work on the 2004 Cosworth engine is just about the only area which is on target, though there are already questions over whether those targets were tough enough, considering BMW, Ferrari and Mercedes are expected to be lighter, and offer an extra 30 bhp. On the bright side, the unit offers surprising room to be tuned to bring the full power to bear during the race itself, once the actual patterns of usage over the remainder of the weekend have been identified.

The issues with the car are not insurmountable - the aero package is being tidied up over Christmas, and could turn out very nicely, whilst a first look at the new tyres shows the design should work well with Michelin next year. Any pace given up by the suspension should be more than recouped by having tyres that last more than a couple of laps. And Christian Klien could prove to be very fast indeed, once he gets up to speed. The real worry for the team is flagging morale, as the relatively tight budget combined with an ongoing lack of faith in Ford's management has a lasting affect on the way everything hangs together.