Toyota Vow to Keep Focusing on 2009 Car

Considering that all championship big guns have began scoring some impressive results thanks to continuing their hard work on the 2009 technical package, Toyota has also vowed to keep developing their TF109 for the remainder of the ongoing season. Even if they admitted part of their Cologne operations have began focusing on the 2010 challenger, Toyota insisted they consider the TF109 a big part of there development programme.

As argued by many team bosses in recent weeks, the switch of focus towards next year's car will not have the same effect as a year before. And that's because little of the ongoing technical and aerodynamic rules will change for 2010, which means the next year's machinery will practically be based on the one this year.

Consequently, having an efficient and competitive car this year – even in not for the time being, but heading towards that purpose for the final rounds of 2009 – will ensure a decent rate of success for the 2010 challenger. And Toyota's team boss John Howett doesn't disagree with that at all.

“We still have targets to reach this season so we have not even considered switching all development to the 2010 car. Significant work is going on in parallel on the 2010 car, as was always planned, but we are still working hard to extract more performance from the TF109,” said Howett.

After 3 podiums in the first 4 races of the season – and a maiden pole position in Formula One, in Bahrain – Toyota have performed below expectations throughout the European schedule. Nevertheless, Howett believes the base for the TF109 is highly competitive and only needs minor adjustments – for which the people back at Cologne are working very hard – for the team to start challenging for podiums again.

“We have an extremely competitive baseline this year so the challenge is to keep up development and unlock all the potential of our package. We have a duty to ourselves, our partners and fans to push on at full throttle with our development programme but, more importantly, we know the leading cars are not out of reach so we must fight for every bit of extra performance,” added the Toyota official.