Nobody could really take it in. Because it wasn’t really happening. Was it?
Jari-Matti Latvala looked at the big screen. Looked away. Looked back. There was an element of morbid fascination about the disaster unfolding before his eyes.
Putting his hands behind his head, the team principal pushed his Toyota Gazoo Racing cap down over his eyes.
It was real. It was happening.
That was Lamia this month. Jyväskylä last month, too.
Toyota’s apparent demise in both the manufacturers’ and drivers’ championship races has been the story of the World Rally Championship’s late summer. Busy preparing the gravel-trim GR Yaris Rally1 for the last time, Toyota’s technical director Tom Fowler took a moment to share his thoughts on the season so far.
Has 2024 been a disaster?
Toyota trails Hyundai in both championships, but has won more rallies this year
The bold facts are that that the gap between Toyota and series leader Hyundai is 35 times bigger than it was two rallies ago. Granted, there was just a single point between the two coming out of Latvia (meaning the difference is 35) and there are still 165 available across the next three events. Driver-wise, Thierry Neuville is 34 up on team-mate Ott Tänak with Toyota’s nearest challenger Sébastien Ogier a further four down.
The above doesn’t do anything to discourage the disaster talk. But maybe there are some other, almost as bold, facts worthy of consideration.
Toyota has outscored Hyundai six to four in event wins. And in stage wins. And in stages led.
Fowler admits Kalla Rovanperä’s decision to run a part-program was always going to impact on Toyota’s challenge for the title.
Kalle Rovanperä's decision to go part-time in 2024 was always going to hurt Toyota
“With the driver line-up, I think we lost quite a lot automatically,” Fowler told DirtFish. “But, at the same time, the emphasis of the championship also changed in a direction that doesn’t favor the team line-up we had through circumstances: coming into the year, the expectation was that we have the chance to win quite a lot of rallies, but to put that together into a program for any one driver or for the team will be very challenging.
“What happened so far is that we won quite a lot of rallies, but we didn’t put that together for any one driver or the team. So I’m not sure the result is any different than the than the expectation we went in with.
“The problem is: your expectation of sport is that if you win, you become the champion, but that’s not the championship we’re in this year.”
While Fowler is all about further developing Toyota’s already impressive WRC silverware collection, he’s quick to point to the definition of success through this season.
“If you look at where we were as a team this time last year,” he said, “we were a Rally1 factory outfit with the potential for customer cars being provided. Now we’re that and a Rally2 customer car provider – and the Rally2 car is a championship contending car.
Toyota has been fighting at the front of WRC2 as well as the Rally1 field
“Last year we had three or four cars out [on rallies] and we were leading WRC, now we have more than 10 cars out and we’re winning in both WRC and WRC2 categories. After launching the car in Monte Carlo, there’s no doubt the GR Yaris Rally2 has been one of the season’s success stories – and a part of the Toyota story we’re very proud of.”
The truth about the turbos
The turbo-related issues suffered by first Evans and then Ogier in Greece scuppered – at least partly – Toyota’s chances of Acropolis success earlier this month. But what happened? When we left Lamia, the team was looking to deep-dive data in an effort to find out what had gone wrong.
Fowler: “The easiest way to put it is that we were pushing the power unit hard for every possible piece of response and horsepower that was available, because of the situation what we’re in.
“We pushed the mapping to the edge, then there was the element of the stages being rougher than [in] recent years and the temperature was higher than recent years. All of those things added up to put more stress onto the turbocharger than we should have done.
“When Elfyn’s car came in, we didn’t have time to go through all of the data. The turbo had failed, so we changed the unit – but we didn’t know the cause of the failure and because we didn’t know the cause, we took the decision not to change the turbo on Séb’s car.”
Currently, data is downloaded from cars as soon as they arrive back in the service park – the arrival of the WRC’s command center could see telemetry being beamed back to service live. The upside is the potential for an early diagnosis of an issue, while the downside would be that everybody – rivals included – find out exactly what’s going on.
Fowler’s not convinced.
He continued: “This idea that we’re going to be sending data back and have some sort of eureka moment where we understand what the car needs is more like Tom Cruise Hollywood movie-spec. The turbo is rotating 160,000 times every minute and we’re generating 100 measurements every second. You have to look through that data and you’re not looking for one number, one spike, you’re looking for a trend across hundreds of thousands of data points which all vary by a very small amount from hundreds of thousands of other data points.
“This is absolutely not an excuse. We didn’t have time to look through the data, but it was absolutely our mistake for running the car in the specification we did. We had tested [this specification] but not with the precise conditions of rough roads and really hot weather. We made a mistake.”
While there’s no doubt he wouldn’t run the car in that shape again for those conditions, the deep data-dive has delivered useable numbers moving forwards.
“We realized a few things during the analysis of the disaster which actually can bring performance in the future, but in a slightly different and safer way,” Fowler added. “We’re definitely not ruling out [running cars in] the spec we used in Greece and we could use it again this season. Done in a slightly different way, it will definitely bring performance.”
How’s it been for Fowler personally?
The GR Yaris Rally is a Fowler car. Of course, he’s surrounded by experts in every direction at the team’s base in Jyväskylä and Cologne, where the engines are prepared. But it’s still Tom’s motor.
“Of course, Greece hurt,” he said. “It was a big disappointment. Honestly, I would say Finland was more painful. I understand what we did wrong in Greece and I hold my hands up and say the job wasn’t good enough on the technical front on this point. But in Finland, we didn’t put a foot wrong and, while we kept the win, we lost so many of the points we’d accrued.
“The trouble is with motorsport – and with rallying in particular – is that you have two hours sleep when you win and you have two hours sleep when you lose. Perspective can be very easily lost on an event; the good feeling from winning doesn’t last very long, but the bad feeling of losing can last a very long time.
Fowler can see the positives despite a difficult couple of rallies in Finland and Greece
“Looking back on Greece, there were positives in and, in my mind, without that turbo issue Sébastien Ogier was going to win that rally by a very, very long way. I’m sure Christian Loriaux [Hyundai WRC manager] and others will point to the fact that we couldn’t last the whole rally, but we know the performance we found…”
What are the chances of beating Hyundai?
Latvala has already said it’s rally-by-rally. Thoughts on Chile, Tom?
“Chile is the most straightforward of the bunch,” said Fowler, “but it’s still not straightforward.”
Who could forget the tire trouble which struck Toyota on the morning loop on the second day in Chile last year, when Evans and Rovanperä emerged from the final stage before lunch on Saturday with slicks on the rear of their Toyotas.
“The mistake with the tires last year was from a miscalculation – but we were trying to get the maximum from the package we had,” Fowler recalled.
“This time around the itinerary is different, the grip and the abrasiveness is different, who’s to say the choice we did last year wouldn’t work this time around? Of course we learn from last year, but the goalposts have moved again this time. Like I said, Chile’s a bit more straightforward the Central Europe and Japan – but it’s still complex.”
But with 30-plus points in both title races, things must be straightforward for Hyundai?
“Do you think?” is the response, with something of a grin. “When you just have to drive your car to the end of every rally. You start listening to everything, everything that’s always rattled in the car is going to sound so much louder for [Thierry] Neuville on the next three rallies. They’ll start pulling things back and venturing into areas you don’t really understand as a driver and as a team.
“For us, simple: we keep pushing to make sure they do all the work they have to do to get to the end. And if they do that, then most likely they’re going to win it. But we need to make sure that we keep them honest in every way.”
