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Archive: Mike Gascoyne

The championship changes focus

20 April 2009 18:33

Categories: Opinion, Report

Brawn GP have had about a month in the spotlight. With their Lazarus-like rebirth, their fairytale Melbourne victory and the diffuser controversy, no-one has been able to stop talking about them. The dominance of their performance in Melbourne led many to suspect that Brawn would have at least the first few races completely wrapped up.

But already in Sepang there were signs that the Brawn supremacy was not quite as large as it had seemed. Although Jenson Button won the race, Rubens Barrichello rued his 4th place finish. Then in China Brawn had to make do with a 3-4 rather than the 1-2 they will have been aiming for.

It is easy to write this off as a temporary blip. The Red Bull is clearly an awesome car in the wet. We saw this also in Sepang, when Mark Webber absolutely flew once it started to rain. This has been a trait of Red Bull cars for a few years now, and it even continues in spite of the radical changes to the technical regulations this year.

Fuel-corrected qualifying times show that Brawn still had the advantage over one lap in the dry. But nonetheless, Red Bull’s pace must be giving Brawn cause for concern. The car is also nifty in the dry, as we saw in Melbourne where Sebastian Vettel was running in 2nd for almost the entire race until his crash with Robert Kubica.

What’s more, Red Bull are now hard at work creating a double diffuser which will probably be on the car come Monaco or Turkey. There is already a question mark over whether Brawn will have the resources to continue to develop the car. Red Bull have a big area that they still haven’t exploited, yet they are already in a position to win races.

So congratulations to Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. What a transformation from last year’s damp squib. To think that there were rumours that Christian Horner was going to get the sack. Not any more!

Red Bull are among the most likeable teams, and Seb and Mark are two charismatic drivers. It has been noted before that this year’s press conferences are much better now that there are personable, chatty drivers finishing in the top three.

At the opposite end of the grid, an equally novel presence — Ferrari. Although the Scuderia can seek solace from the fact that Massa was running quite well until his retirement, the fact is that Ferrari are currently dogged by reliability problems and are not in a position to win races, never mind the championship. Now they have failed to score a point, though they have at least leapfrogged Force India. Nonetheless, this their worst start to the season since 1980. Ominously, that was the start of a 21 year long Championship drought for Ferrari.

Once again I must make the point that this makes McLaren look as though they are having a great season. Lewis Hamilton was racy in the first half of the race in China, no doubt using his kers to good effect. But later on he dropped off, constantly falling off track and spinning. This seems to be a return of his trait of poor tyre management.

In the end, the steadier Heikki Kovalainen leapfrogged him while he was off-track — the icing on the cake of a lacklustre race for Hamilton. 4th in the Constructors’ Championship is not quite the unmitigated disaster this season promised to be for McLaren. It seems as though the car is dire over one lap, but its race pace is not so bad.

One of the teams that McLaren has unexpectedly outshone so far is Renault. I feel deeply sorry for the way Alonso’s race unfolded. Renault opted for a bold and aggressive strategy by filling Alonso light. But this unravelled as the race was — unnecessarily, in my view — started behind the safety car.

This gave Alonso no chance to build up a gap as intended. Indeed, matters were compounded by the fact that Alonso took a pit stop at just the wrong time. This meant that effectively Alonso started the race from the back, rather than second as intended. The fact that Alonso made it back up to 9th by the end of the race is to be applauded.

Alonso’s team mate Nelsinho Piquet provided an excellent demonstration of just why he is not Formula 1 material. It is difficult to guess which F1 driver will get the sack first. There are two other prime candidates in my view.

First is Giancarlo Fisichella, who rumour has it is beginning to try the patience of the Force India team. Fisichella has been largely anonymous so far this season, apart from the moment where he forgot where his pit box was, to much embarrassment. In comparison, Adrian Sutil was running a highly credible 6th on merit when he aquaplaned off the circuit in Shanghai. Had he finished, it would have caused major embarrassment for Ferrari, who would have been the only team yet to score a point.

The third driver who must be hoping to improve soon is Sébastien Bourdais. I thought he should have been given another year to properly assess his abilities. The Frenchman promised he would be better on slicks. Well, now we have slicks — and he has failed to up his game.

He is being totally outclassed by this season’s only rookie, Sébastien Buemi. He showed moments of serious talent in Shanghai, including a bold overtaking move on Kimi Räikkönen. In the end, Buemi could not stop himself from having the occasional off, but he still managed to finish 8th.

Not many suspected that Buemi would be a star of F1 based on his GP2 performances. Mike Gascoyne (who, incidentally, was excellent on the BBC this weekend — could he be our Steve Matchett?) said something to this effect. I was first seriously impressed by Buemi after watching him in last year’s GP2 sprint race at Magny Cours. During that race he ploughed his way through the field, making Bruno Senna look a bit ordinary. That was also a wet race. Is Buemi therefore a wet weather specialist, not unlike his fellow Red Bull protégé Vettel?

Final word — what on earth happened to Toyota’s pace? And Williams for that matter. So much for the advantages of the double decker diffuser!

5 comments

In praise of The Inside Line podcast

11 June 2008 18:44

Categories: Opinion

I want to bring attention to a podcast that I think somehow passes under the radar of many F1 fans. I certainly did not pay much attention to it until recently. But the editions I have heard have been A-grade stuff.

The Formula One Inside Line With Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips

Okay, so it’s not the catchiest title, but the podcast itself is excellent. I assume it is similar to The Guardian‘s F1 podcast which was also fronted by Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips. For whatever reason the newspaper isn’t responsible for the podcast any more, but it lives on independently.

Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips are well-known voices to listeners of BBC Radio 5 Live’s coverage of Formula 1 races. I can tell you, ‘The Inside Line’ is not an exaggeration when it comes to this pair. They certainly know what’s what in the paddock.

The Canadian GP podcast contains everything I have come to expect from this podcast — an incisive review of the race’s major events, and an insider’s take on the paddock gossip. Here, the experience of Maurice Hamilton’s decades writing about F1 and Ian Phillip’s journalistic background combined with the insider knowledge attained in his role as Force India’s Director of Business Affairs comes into its own.

This podcast contains the clearest explanation of the simmering war between Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley I have heard yet. There is also an explanation that every team in the paddock and everyone else involved wants a Concorde Agreement except the FIA. And the threats of a breakaway are quite real. And Luca di Montezemolo did mean to say that Max Mosley should step down. Ian Phillips explains why very well, and I’d recommend you go and listen to the podcast for the full explanation.

Then Maurice Hamilton’s connections allows him to bring us the fact that Bernie Ecclestone and Luca di Montezemolo were spotted having lunch together in New York. It’s pretty clear now that something is happening, and the discussion in this podcast has made that more clear than anything else I have read in the past few weeks.

This isn’t the first time The Inside Line podcast has come up with the goods. Of course, this year’s Monaco Grand Prix will always be remembered for the rotten luck that Adrian Sutil encountered. Who better, therefore, than Ian Phillips to get literally the inside line on the race’s top story? And being stationed in the Force India garage meant that they got a good interview with Adrian Sutil as well.

That podcast also contained a pretty trenchant criticism of Max Mosley’s letter that was sent out in the run-up to the Monaco Grand Prix. To top it off, Ian Phillips had more information on the controversial press conference that was perceived to be rigged in Max Mosley’s favour, with Gerhard Berger reading out a prepared statement.

Clearly, the star of the show is Ian Phillips. But even when he was away, the podcast still came up with the goods. Because the person who stood in was no less a person than Mike Gascoyne, Force India’s Chief Technical Officer. He was surprisingly good in his analysis of the Turkish Grand Prix as well.

That weekend Maurice Hamilton got the credit for the “one car teams” theory that was beginning to emerge. That was because he repeated it on the Chequered Flag which is heard by more listeners. But listening to The Inside Line podcast, it’s clear that the theory actually originated with Mike Gascoyne.

If there is one problem with the Inside Line podcast is that it’s clearly recorded a bit too early for a full analysis of the race to take place. Often mechanical problems will be glossed over as it is still unclear why a driver retired. Some more time may be needed to allow the dust to settle. But there are probably time constraints as no doubt everyone involved in the podcast has other commitments to wrap up, flights to catch and so on.

However, by my reckoning there really is no better way of getting a feel of what’s really happening in the paddock than this podcast. It doesn’t have the same backing that the Chequered Flag gets from the BBC, so The Inside Line is not so well known. But it deserves to be heard by as many Formula 1 fans.

9 comments

Kubica excels, but where is Kimi?

26 May 2008 18:46

Categories: Opinion

Well thank goodness for that — the second good race in a row. Just what the doctor ordered to let us forget about all the politics going on in F1 at the moment. So where to start?

First of all, hats off to Lewis Hamilton who drove a great race despite banging into the barrier early on in the race. I was a bit worried about McLaren’s prospects following qualifying. Ferrari are usually poor at Monaco and the fact that they had a 1-2 in qualifying (seemingly with reasonable fuel loads as well) spelled potential bad news for McLaren. So far most of the tracks can be reasonably considered ‘Ferrari tracks’. But if McLaren can’t win at Monaco, it will be difficult for them to win anywhere.

But while qualifying was bad, the race turned out to be fine. Despite Hamilton’s bang, he otherwise drove a pretty flawless race to take the chequered flag. Hamilton has described it as the best win of his career, and it’s hard to argue with that.

But he was helped out by some good luck. He was lucky that his bash on the barrier didn’t cause any long-term damage to his car. And after the race there was the revelation that he had developed a slow puncture on his slow-down lap. Had the race gone full distance (instead of hitting the 2 hour limit), it might have been a very different story.

Hamilton was also helped out by Ferrari’s lacklustre race. Felipe Massa was surprisingly solid early on. He dislikes the Monaco circuit and he is known to be poor in the wet. But somehow Felipe Massa has just started to make it all click, and he has been performing superbly well after his embarrassing first two races of the year.

At the start of the race he built up a pretty dominant lead representing an astonishing two seconds per lap! But eventually the conditions got the better of him. An off at Ste Devote meant he had to pass the lead on to Kubica. A late change to dry tyres put an end to his race. Not Ferrari’s finest strategic moments.

Ferrari also made a major error by not having Kimi Räikkönen’s tyres on in time before the start. Immediately the Finn had a drive-through penalty. His start was also incredibly poor, as though he wasn’t paying attention to the lights. He gifted Hamilton second place before even reaching the first corner.

During the race Kimi had a big off at Ste Devote, damaging his front wing in the process. He was also completely off the pace for the duration of the race, and never looked in contention for the win. The final nail in the coffin came after the safety car period where he failed to account for his cold brakes towards the Nouvelle chicane (the fastest part of the circuit), lost control and ploughed into the back of poor Adrian Sutil.

Is this really the 2007 World Champion? Räikkönen has been distinctly patchy all season. It really makes you wonder. Since winning the Championship has he lost motivation? He has been known to have off weekends before, but they are now coming at a rather alarming frequency. I think if he had been driving like this while he was at McLaren, he would never have got a drive at Ferrari. No wonder the red team has supposedly signed up Fernando Alonso for 2010.

As for the victim of Kimi Räikkönen’s poor form, Adrian Sutil, you have to feel sorry for him. I’m not the greatest fan of Sutil. He’s never really shown before why he deserves the hype that some people give him. But his Monaco GP was a stormer, and he was running on 4th on merit, in between the two Ferraris. No wonder he was in floods of tears after Räikkönen drove up his backside.

However, had that not happened the story could well be different. After the race it transpired that he overtook three drivers under yellow flags. In the event he was warned as to his future conduct, but had he finished the race he could well have been penalised.

I also thought it was a bit much for Mike Gascoyne to complain to the stewards about Räikkönen. He said:

as I said if that had been someone at the back, a young guy doing it, they would get a penalty. But it doesn’t seem to happen the other way around.

Of course, a lot of people were saying the same thing about Fisichella’s tangle with Nakajima in Turkey. Had it been Nakajima flying over the top of Fisichella, I am sure the Japanese driver would have faced a ban. Ho hum.

In Monaco, Fisichella himself was celebrating his 200th race. But apart from that he had little to celebrate. He was thoroughly outclassed by his team mate and ended up having to retire in the pits.

Heikki Kovalainen’s run of bad luck continued. A stall on the grid at the start of the formation lap meant he had to start from the pitlane. He spent the entire race in the midfield, but I suppose he should be given credit for managing to finish 8th after gaining two positions right at the end due to Räikkönen’s tangle with Sutil.

Apart from Sutil, one other driver stood out as flawless — Robert Kubica. At one point, after Massa’s off, Kubica looked quite good for the win. It was not to be though as Hamilton ultimately had the pace to outclass him. But this is yet more evidence of Kubica’s talent behind the wheel. Not many drivers can say they didn’t make a mistake yesterday, but Kubica is one of them.

Nick Heidfeld must be wondering just what has hit him. Quick Nick does not look so quick any more compared with his team mate. Sure, he wasn’t helped by a hit from Alonso. But the German was off the pace all weekend, and it’s continuing a disappointing season. Kubica, meanwhile, appears to be ultra-committed with his seemingly extreme diet. I hope soon he is in a car good enough to win a race, because he certainly deserves it now.

Sebastian Vettel had a storming drive. At first it was not looking so great. They were all at sea during practice, unable to make head nor tail of their new car. And because of that new car he started 19th on the grid thanks to a gearbox penalty. But all this did not deter him as he moved up to eventually finish 5th. Great result for the Toro Rosso team.

Mark Webber had a fantastic race. He excels at Monaco but has not always had the luck. But this marks his fifth consecutive points finish — a personal best for Webber. After a career tainted by bad luck, his patience is finally paying off and he sits pretty in 7th in the Championship.

The team mates of those two Red Bull drivers both had to retire within seconds of each other on the same spot of the track. Seemingly a river had formed at Massenet, Coulthard lost control and hit the barriers. Yet another poor showing from David Coulthard, whose appearance should actually be applauded following his scary accident in qualifying which he described as the hardest hit he’s had in his entire career.

Toro Rosso driver Sébastien Bourdais followed Coulthard into the barrier after hitting the same river. We are now waiting for Bourdais to show what he is made of. I don’t follow American motor racing too closely, but I thought they had a few street circuits over there, so I was hoping that Bourdais would be able to show what he’s made of at Monaco. It wasn’t to be. After a strong showing in Australia, he has done little to impress since.

Fernando Alonso was another victim of that river at Massenet. He got away just like Hamilton did though and recovered following a tyre change. He was looking good for a period and made a stunning move on Mark Webber at Mirabeau. Unfortunately Alonso must have become too confident after that because a few laps later he tried to pass Heidfeld at Lowes in a move that was never really on the cards. That only had one conclusion: crunch. Alonso never recovered from that.

At least Alonso doesn’t have the heat on him like his team mate Nelsinho “Junior” Piquet Jnr. Clearly the team have lost confidence in him because they would not let him change to dry tyres until they saw what Alonso could do on dries. But the time they let him come in, his extreme wets were well past their sell-by date and he had a swarm of cars all over the back of him and beginning to get past. However, Piquet didn’t help his case by binning it almost as soon as he got onto dry tyres. More ammunition for his critics.

Another rookie who disappointed was Timo Glock. He had no fewer than three spins during the race and I have to say that it increasingly looks like he is not F1 material. Trulli wasn’t much better, it has to be said, with an anonymous race at a circuit he’s supposed to be good at.

Barrichello finally broke his duck. A points position has been beckoning for a while, and he has finally got it. Button should have done more. He excels in the wet, but was unable to show it in Monaco this year. An early tap with Nick Heidfeld basically put paid to his chances.

Kazuki Nakajima provided yet more evidence that he is not just another crash-happy kamikaze pilot from Japan. Monaco will have provided ample opportunity for him to stuff it in the barriers or something, but he had a solid, if fairly anonymous, drive to 7th. Meanwhile, his much-hyped team mate, Nico Rosberg, was not so impressive. He looked set to score some points until getting it all wrong through the Swimming Pool. A big crash resulted.

All-in-all, a great race at Monaco with plenty of talking points. What a relief — the Monaco GP is often a boring procession, but the wet-dry nature of the race ensured much mayhem.

Next up is Canada which is often a good race. The track suits the McLaren and Hamilton won there last year, so they will be hoping to capitalise on their Championship lead. It’s a surprise that Hamilton leads the Championship. Thanks to the patchy form of both Massa and Räikkönen, Hamilton might be able to grab an authoritative lead. Don’t underestimate Robert Kubica as well, who remains just six points away from the head of the table.

3 comments

Three mysterious drivers

20 May 2008 00:58

Categories: Opinion

At last I have finished my exams so I now have more time to post. There is a huge backlog of issues for me to get through, and I’m not sure if I’ll get through them all. I will attempt by condensing posts and including them as ‘mini posts’ in a series. These little sub-sections could have been posts in their own right had I had the time. This first of my catch-up posts looks at the trouble we have nailing down three front-running drivers.

The mystery of Kimi Räikkönen

Clive wrote a post last month revealing his “gnawing doubt” about Kimi Räikkönen.

Why does he throw it off the road so needlessly sometimes? Why has he not blown Massa into the weeds yet? Why does he look so determined at one race and then apathetic at the next? It is all very well blaming it on his enigmatic personality but that explains nothing. The fact is that he is completely unpredictable and it is probably this that makes me doubt him.

There’s no doubt that Räikkönen blows hot and cold. Just look at the first half of 2007 compared to the end of the season. At the start, Kimi was rather unspectacular — almost anonymous. But as the season finale drew closer he became hyper-motivated, more flawless and quicker. The fact that he overcame a 17 point deficit in the final two rounds just says it all.

But now he is looking a bit more average again. In Australia he seemingly couldn’t keep his concentration, spectacularly throwing it off the road needlessly a number of times. In Bahrain and Turkey, too, we saw little of his foot-to-the-floor attitude we saw towards the end of last season. Clive asks, “Must we admit that Massa is on a par with our hero?”

I think it’s a bit much to say that Räikkönen and Massa are on a par with each other. But unquestionably Räikkönen has not become the race-winning machine some people expected him to become five or six years ago.

My own theory is that Räikkönen is genuinely great. But we became too used to Michael Schumacher’s utter dominance. When he retired, we expected someone to immediately fill a Schumacher-sized gap. It doesn’t happen that way.

Schumacher was exceptional in that he was in close contention for the Championship in almost every year of his F1 career (1999 being an exception due to his broken leg, 2005, 1996 and 1993 due to abnormally inferior equipment). No-one before him can claim that level of dominance, and I see no reason to expect anyone after him to claim it either. Not for a long time, anyway.

The mystery of Felipe Massa

Ah, for the days before Bahrain. It was all so simple then. Massa can’t handle F1 without traction control and Ferrari are looking to replace him ASAP. Not so fast. In the subsequent three races the Brazilian has mounted an incredible fightback under extreme pressure. Dodgy drivers don’t score 28 points from 3 races.

But I’m not a convert. I still think Massa is a sub-par driver who certainly does not deserve a Ferrari seat — at least not with an “equal number one” status. As has been pointed out by plenty of people, this year’s calendar flatters Massa. Turkey has moved to an earlier slot, meaning that most of Massa’s favourite circuits are bunched together.

In fact, this year he has done worse than last year. Last year he won in Spain whereas he could only come second behind his team mate this year. In 2007, Massa scored 37 points at the five circuits where Massa has managed to score 28 this year.

Of the Massa-friendly tracks, only Interlagos remains. Given that it is at the end of the season, Massa will probably be well out of contention by then, and may have to give way to assist Räikkönen’s championship hopes.

Monaco comes next, and Massa’s record there is not so glittering — a sole third place from last year being his best result in the principality. I might find myself eating humble pie here, but I doubt it. It will be business as usual from this Sunday.

The mystery of Lewis Hamilton

The last time I wrote about Lewis Hamilton, it was on the back of a lacklustre Bahrain weekend. Since then he has mounted something of a fightback, with strong performances in Spain and Turkey. But the Turkish Grand Prix yet again brought to the fore that issue that Hamilton appears to have with tyre management.

After the race it was announced by Bridgestone that Lewis Hamilton’s tyres were found to be at risk of internal delamination. Therefore, for safety reasons, McLaren opted to put him on a three stop strategy, thereby minimising the amount of time spent on his tyres, particularly the softs.

I have to take my hat off to Lewis Hamilton for managing to make the best of a bad situation. There seems to be some confusion over the optimality of his strategy. Clive seems to think it was advantageous to be on a three-stopper, but I don’t understand his explanation. He says, “that the three-stop plan was the only way for [McLaren] to stay with the Ferraris and it had nothing to do with tires”. But the explanation for this, as Clive himself goes on to explain, has everything to do with tyres. And if it was the only way for McLaren to go, why was Kovalainen on a two stop strategy?

Mike Gascoyne on Maurice Hamilton’s Inside Line podcast said that the two and three stop strategies are actually equally optimal at Turkey according to the simulations. But if that is so it doesn’t explain why Hamilton was the only person in the entire field to opt for the three stop strategy. If they were really equal, would not more people try it out if only to try and overtake their rivals ‘in the pitlane’?

I conclude that if Hamilton’s tyres could withstand it, he would have gone for a two-stopper. So he had a compromised strategy in Turkey. In this context, Hamilton had a stormer of a race. Even if the three-stopper was his preferred strategy, it was a great fight between him and Massa. On live timing it looked captivating as the pair swapped green and purple sectors throughout the race. And on top of it there was even a genuine overtaking move for the lead!

So hats off for the performance. But is it time for Hamilton to get his act into gear when it comes to looking after his tyres? I have been saying this for a while now. All too often now, Hamilton has been thwarted by shot tyres. You can pretty much squarely blame his championship loss on his worn-out tyres.

The debate has been whether or not Bridgestone should cater for Hamilton’s more aggressive driving style. There is something to be said for this. However, Hamilton should really learn the limitations of his equipment and be able to drive on that limit without exceeding it. Is that not what motor racing is about? For a period of time Kimi Räikkönen became known as a car-breaker because his engine went pop a few times. I think a better case can be made for Hamilton being a tyre-ruiner.

We keep on hearing from a certain man who works for ITV that Lewis Hamilton is “Senna-esque”. Senna was known for being able to make dry tyres work in wet conditions. Hamilton is struggling to make dry tyres work in dry conditions. So until he masters this, I’d like to see less of the Senna comparisons.

10 comments

The mystery of Mike Gascoyne

12 April 2006 17:41

Categories: Formula 1

Well now that Mike Gascoyne seems to have properly left Toyota as technical director (chassis), some people are asking if he actually deserves to get another job in Formula 1. The people in the Pitpass Forums certainly seem sceptical! It is a comment that comes up every time Mike Gascoyne moves on to another team in a blaze of hype: he’s never been responsible for a World Championship-winning car.

But is it really feasible that Gascoyne made a name for himself purely through chance and bluffing as some in the Pitpass Forums seem to be suggesting? Well, looking at the career profile that the BBC provided in their article, it is hardly anything to set the pulse racing.

  • 1989-1991: McLaren (aerodynamicist)
  • 1991-94: Sauber (head of aerodynamics)
  • 1994-98: Tyrrell (deputy technical director)
  • 1998-2000: Jordan (technical director)
  • 2001-03: Renault (technical director)
  • 2003-06: Toyota (technical director chassis)

The only seriously impressive car there is the 1989 McLaren (Wikipedia says Gascoyne worked for Tyrrell in 1990 and 1991), and he probably didn’t have an awful lot of influence on that. Those years at Tyrrell in the mid-1990s are probably ones he would rather leave out of his CV — although at the time he apparently impressed Harvey Postlethwaite who was no dummy.

Gascoyne’s spells at Jordan, Renault and Toyota have all produced noticeable upswings. I don’t know how much input Gascoyne would have had, but when he joined Jordan in 1998 they hadn’t scored a single point. By the end of the season they had won a race and finished 4th in the Constructors’ Championship. 1999 was even more successful. But it also marked the high point, and Jordan’s descent also began under Gascoyne.

When he moved to Benetton / Renault it also marked the start of an upswing. 2001 was an absolutely horrendous season (they scored just 10 points and finished a disgusting 7th place in the Championship, compared with 20 points in 4th in 2000). But by 2003 they were showing real improvement — enough for them to win a race. But by the time that win came, Gascoyne had been sent on gardening leave. Some would say that the upswing in form was more to do with Renault’s impressive launch control system and the engine’s good accelleration than anything Gascoyne did. After all, the win did come at Hungaroring where a good start and accelleration is key.

Rumour has it that Gascoyne wasn’t really keen on joining Toyota in the first place. He apparently went up to Flavio Briatore and waggled Toyota’s high offer in front of him. Gascoyne was looking for a wage rise, but instead he was told to go away and join Toyota. Briatore can’t have been much convinced about Gascoyne’s talent!

Let’s not underestimate the task that Gascoyne faced at Toyota. He had to turn a team that had always trundled around near the back of the grid into potential Championship winners. In 2002 they scored two points, the same amount as Minardi and Arrows (who went bust mid-season and didn’t even compete in all of the races). 2003 and 2004 saw only minor improvements.

But 2005 was truly a successful year for Toyota. Okay, their performance may have tailed off towards the end of the season, but at the start they were securing podium finishes at will, and they were still gabbing the odd one at the end of the season. They finished 4th, ahead of Williams and Honda. I would say that’s pretty good going.

At the start of the 2006 season, it is true that Toyota were a bit of a shambles. But that could easily be explained away as a tyre problem. And they’ve already turned it around by scoring a podium in round 3. And let’s also remember that if you forget the results of the 2005 season, those performances at the start of 2006 would not have been abnormally slow for Toyota.

Maybe you would still say “no excuses” — if Gascoyne is such a great technical director he shouldn’t be making cars that are finishing 14th and 16th in a field of 18 finishers, ahead of only a Midland and a Super Aguri. That only makes it all the more confusing, though, that Toyota and Gascoyne should decide to part company when they score a podium result again.

I think it is really difficult to judge just how good Gascoyne is. He’s had a hand in some teams’ greatest moments (Jordan and Toyota), but also some of their worst moments (Jordan and Renault). One thing I would say, though, is that I find it unlikely that any big team would want to hire Gascoyne. I am sure that Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, Honda, Red Bull and particularly Renault are all very happy with their current setup. If he gets another job as technical director for a Formula 1 team, it would probably be for Toro Rosso or somebody like that. It’s probably just as well he wants to “spend more time with his family”.

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