Toyota links up with Haas F1 team – but rules out full return

Toyota’s motorsport division has agreed a wide-ranging technical partnership with the Haas Formula 1 team – but it insists the deal isn’t a precursor to a full-scale return to grand prix racing.

The Japanese manufacturer has secured a deal with the American F1 squad that is intended to help develop young Japanese drivers and Toyota Gazoo Racing engineers and mechanics by allowing them to work with Haas.

As part of the deal, Toyota Gazoo Racing logos will appear on Haas’s two F1 cars, but Toyota has insisted there are no plans to return to the sport as an engine supplier. Gazoo Racing president Tomoya Takahashi said: “Some might jump to the conclusion ‘Toyota is back in F1’, but that’s not the case.”

Instead, the partnership will revolve around what Toyota calls the three “essential elements”of car production: people, pipeline and product. It will involve Toyota-contracted drivers testing Haas F1 cars, with the firm’s engineers and mechanics also working with Haas and applying their manufacturing skills to aid F1 aerodynamic development.

In return, Gazoo Racing says it is aiming to learn about the Haas F1 team’s data utilisation skills, which it could then apply to its own development efforts.

Takahashi added that placing engineers with Haas would teach them skills and knowledge “that can only be cultivated by competing… at the pinnacle of motorsports.

“I believe that this will lead to the element of product, in other words to the development of human resources who can provide feedback for production vehicles.”

Toyota competed in F1 with its own team between 2002 and 2009, but despite a huge budget and scoring points in its first race, the outfit never won a race and it achieved a best finish of sixth in the constructors’ championship. It quit the sport abruptly at the end of the 2009 season.

Toyota chairman and keen racer Akio Toyoda said: “Somewhere deep in his heart, that ordinary older car-loving guy Akio Toyoda had always regretted having blocked – by pulling out of F1 – Japanese youths’ path toward driving the world’s fastest cars.”

He added that “I still believe my decision as the president of Toyota to withdraw from F1 was not wrong” and said he hoped the Haas partnership would help Japanese drivers in their quest to reach F1.

“Please make sure that tomorrow’s headlines don’t read: ‘Toyota finally returns to F1’,” said Toyoda. “Rather, it would be great to see headlines and articles that inspire Japanese children to dream of the possibility that they too could one day drive the world’s fastest cars.”

Toyota currently competes extensively outside of F1, with works programmes in the World Endurance Championship, World Rally Championship and Dakar Rally, a Nascar operation and a wide number of customer racing programmes.