WRC - Toyota’s time is coming Toyota is expected to commit to the World Rally Championship early next year at its usual pre-season press conference in Tokyo, where the Japanese firm’s 2015 motorsport programme will be unveiled. Sources in Japan have confirmed a decision is near with the most likely outcome being a return to the WRC for the first time since Toyota departed for Formula 1 at the end of 1999. The source said: “Things are moving inside Toyota right now. [Akio] Toyoda-san [Toyota Motor Corporation president] has never hidden either his love of rallying or his desire to get Toyota back into rallying. What he wanted to see was the enthusiasm both in and out of the company for the same outcome. We believe we are there now.” Toyota’s motorsport arm in Cologne – TMG – has built and tested a Yaris World Rally Car this year and a spokesman from TMG confirmed that test schedule will be increased in 2015 in preparation for a return to the series in 2017. “We’ve done a handful of tests this year,” said the spokesman. “Next year we’ll be ramping that up and going further afield. We’ll go further north into Scandinavia [for a snow test] for example.” The spokesman admitted there was no doubting Toyota and Toyoda’s desire to get back to the WRC. “TMG was built on rallying and there are people still in the company who have been working on that project since the 1970s,” said the spokesman. “Rallying remains at the heart of the company and there’s a genuine wish to go back. As far as we can judge it seems there’s also a wish to go back from Japan, I think Akio Toyoda has communicated that quite clearly. “It’s a wish and expectation to see a clear timetable. That would match the Japanese ethos to plan and prepare correctly for any possible activity. We would certainly hope for a clear timetable towards competition.”
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 19:00:02 +0000
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