John Howett crashes Toyota F1 car in farewell demo run!

[Giuseppe F1]

!!! :)

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/oh-de-cologne/

[Giuseppe F1]

Interesting sub-point about a possible ART GP deal with Toyota for 2010/11 F1 chassis

[jonny hurlock]

lol, btw is there any footage of this crash

[AndyRAC]

Just about sums up his time in charge of the Toyota GP team......quite apt I think!!

[UltimateDanGTR]

Interesting sub-point about a possible ART GP deal with Toyota for 2010/11 F1 chassis

I hope that's true, ART are the best open wheel racing team outside of F1 IMO.

and as for the crash, well, 'the car in the wall, is a toyota'


or maybe he got his accelerator stuck like on the road cars :p

[tf109b]

there isn't anything wrong with the accelerators on their road cars. Nothing has been found to prove this. Toyota was a sad story in F1. They were faster than Ferrari and McLaren last year, but the drivers they had weren't anything to brag about. Sutil probably could have won in that car. Hell, I was thinking they should have stayed and gave Kimi a ride. KERS is what gave Ferrari their win at Spa last year. And Hamilton + KERS is what made McLaren's wins. Toyota needed good management, and they didnt have it with Howett. He should have done more to get the drivers they needed, not stick with Trulli and Glock. Kobayashi showed better performance than them in 2 races! How sad. I like Toyota too, hopefully they will get back in F1.

[Jag_Warrior]

there isn't anything wrong with the accelerators on their road cars. Nothing has been found to prove this.

Well then, Toyota gave away a whole bunch of free accelerator pedal assemblies for no reason. :D

As for this incident, I agree with AndyRAC: oh, the irony.

[Koz]

Meh, at least it wasn't Stefan who crashed it...

[tf109b]

@Jag- yeah, they pretty much did give away things. But not accelerators. They just put in a little something to make the pedal not get stuck on floor mats and other things. Besides all that, I think the runaway toyota stuff was blown up to be something it wasn't. Sort of how John Howett was. Something he wasn't. I'm glad he isn't running Toyota Motorsport anymore. At least TTE. He did fine when Toyota were in WRC, but Ove Anderson was also around. He passed unfortunately. But with someone like Nicolas Todt, maybe with Toyota help, they could turn into a good team.

[Jag_Warrior]

In the automotive and aerospace world, any condition which can cause death or severe injury is rated a 10 on a FMEA (safety issue without warning), and should receive the highest level of attention. Toyota had such a condition, knew about it at least two years ago and hid it... then denied it by concocting this floormat fantasy.

True, they didn't replace the accelerator pedal assembly - unless a broken part was found (in which case the assembly was replaced). Typically, they inserted a reinforcement bar which reduced tension and friction in the pedal assembly. This had nothing to do with floormats. Some of the defective cars didn't even have floormats installed at the time of incidents. The supplier claims that the pedal assemblies were made to Toyota specs. So they say it's a design flaw. Toyota, as far as I know, hasn't admitted whether it was a design flaw or whether they're going to make the supplier share the blame and call it a "manufacturing defect" (in order to keep Toyota business).

Don't get me wrong; I have long been a fan of Toyota's world-renowned production system. It really is (has been) amazing. Everyone from Boeing and Bell to Harley-Davidson uses variations of it. But for doing what they did, I have absolutely NO sympathy for them in this case. Every kick to the nads they've gotten over this has been well deserved.

This clown crashing the car is just an ironic exclamation point to one of the most expensive cluster f###s in recent racing history.

[Sleeper]

there isn't anything wrong with the accelerators on their road cars. Nothing has been found to prove this. Toyota was a sad story in F1. They were faster than Ferrari and McLaren last year, but the drivers they had weren't anything to brag about. Sutil probably could have won in that car. Hell, I was thinking they should have stayed and gave Kimi a ride. KERS is what gave Ferrari their win at Spa last year. And Hamilton + KERS is what made McLaren's wins. Toyota needed good management, and they didnt have it with Howett. He should have done more to get the drivers they needed, not stick with Trulli and Glock. Kobayashi showed better performance than them in 2 races! How sad. I like Toyota too, hopefully they will get back in F1.
That car only ever had one chance of winning, in Bahrain last year, and they blew it with bad strategy. That really does sum up Toyotas time in F1.

[jens]

Sutil probably could have won in that car.

The same Sutil, who apparently was at that time getting beaten by Fisichella?

[race_director]

does the repair cost for the car gets deducted from John's final settlement ? :)