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Toyota TF110 Would Have Battled for the F1 Title

Toyota could have finally become a contender for the Formula One crown in 2010, the exact same year the Japanese manufacturer chose to leave the series due to financial reasons. After years and years of topping the big spenders in F1 (close to half of billion of dollars budgets), Toyota chose to leave just when they've started to get things rolling.

Former driver Timo Glock, now racing for struggling newcomers Virgin-Cosworth, revealed that based on the early predictions for the TF110 – the car Toyota had already developed for the 2010 campaign – the car would have probably battled for the title this year, as the early predictions showed great capabilities for the 2010 challenger.

When we stopped the development, we had 20 to 30 points more downforce (with the new car) than the last version of its predecessor. We had far exceeded our goals, for even the TF109 was good enough for podiums,” added Toyota's technical director Pascal Vasselon in an interview with Auto Bild in Germany.

Many of our aerodynamic people have changed to other top teams and we know that our downforce values were quite high.”

Unfortunately, nobody got the chance to enjoy the intense, development and hard work of the Toyota F1 mechanics and engineers, as the TF110 had remained in the Cologne headquarters until Pirelli decided to use it for testing last week. Although it packed a great deal of innovative aerodynamic solutions, the car was not purchased by any of the new teams, which went for other chassis builders instead.

I dare to suggest that we would have had the highest nose of all the current cars,” added Vasselon. “Only in this way would the diffuser operate perfectly. For the first race, we had an update package with the blown diffuser in the pipeline. So with Red Bull we would have been the first.

The only team interested in purchasing Toyota's technical package for the 2011 season – which would need a bit of adjustments, considering the rule changes for the upcoming season – are struggling Hispania Racing F1 Team, whose current chassis built by Dallara has proved a total failure in the 12 races so far.

The HRT F1's cars are constantly 5 to 6 seconds slower than the front-runners in qualifying, and the Spanish officials have already contacted their Toyota counterparts to discuss a deal regarding the TF110. An agreement is imminent, according to some reports.
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