Toyota baffled by pitiful start

Big spenders Toyota left Bahrain with their tails between their legs after a “shocking” start to a season they hoped would bring a maiden win.

Toyota, who have spent over £1bn (€1.46bn) on their five seasons in Formula One, expected to challenge for regular podiums this year after an encouraging fourth in the 2005 constructors’ championship.

But they flopped dramatically in Bahrain yesterday, with Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli finishing an embarrassing 14th and 16th respectively.

They had no excuses for that dismal display and team principal Tsutomu Tomita demanded an immediate improvement in Malaysia this weekend.

He said: “The first grand prix weekend of 2006 has been a shocking way to start the year – not only for the team but for our fans all over the world.

“Our reliability was good and Ralf and Jarno used all their skill and spirit.

“But the car was unexpectedly slower than many of the other cars and we could do nothing to step up during the race.”

Tomita blamed a lack of grip for Toyota’s failure and mourned the loss of the speed which saw them fight for podiums in 2005.

“We have to treat the weekend as a test session and use it to analyse why we did not get the expected performance level,” he added.

“It was a disappointing race and a disappointing weekend and certainly not what we expected coming here based on our performance in testing.

“It seems we have lost the considerable performance advantage we have built up since the middle of last year so we have a lot of work to do to understand the reasons.

“This is a very frustrating atmosphere but I am sure that we will make every effort to come back at the coming races.”

Michael Schumacher pushed world champion Fernando Alonso to the wire in finishing second but his brother Ralf endured a miserable afternoon.

He admits Toyota have no idea why they are so slow – or how to improve.

“This weekend has been a struggle from the start,” Schumacher said.

“Of course this was not the way we hoped to start off the 2006 season but we have to take things as they are and try to move forward from here.

“We don’t know where the problem is but hopefully we will soon find out. The early races will be difficult but all we can do is push as hard as we can to move back up the grid.”