First win still possible in '09 – Toyota

John Howett insists Toyota has not given up hope of finally scoring its maiden Formula 1 victory in 2009 and says the team will continue to develop its current car in an attempt to attain that goal.

After admitting in pre-season that “we feel we have to win” to secure the team’s future beyond this year, Toyota established itself among the leading teams in the opening races following the sport’s major rules overhaul and appeared closer than ever to winning a race after locking out the front row in qualifying in Bahrain.

However, while the team has remained regular points scorers and is in the fight for third place in the constructors’ championship, its TF109 form has fluctuated in recent months and the team not scored a podium finish during the European season.

Team president Howett believes the Cologne-based operation – which appeared to commit its future to F1 until 2012 by signing the new Concorde Agreement – is close to achieving its eight-year ambition and therefore won’t be shifting the baulk of its development focus across to its 2010 car yet.

“Our organisation exists to win races so that is always the goal and this year I believe we are closer than ever to doing that,” Howett said.

“But the surest way of winning our first grand prix is to pursue a relentless development programme, driving performance on.

“This is a team effort and everyone is working flat-out together to fulfil the huge potential of the TF109.

“We'll see how the rest of the season goes but we have the passion and dedication to win this year.”

While acknowledging that work on next year’s challenger is progressing as normal at this stage of the season, Howett says the team still has plenty of reasons to continue developing the TF109 as he believes it has the inherent potential to catch the top teams again.

“We still have targets to reach this season so we have not even considered switching all development to the 2010 car,” he explained.

“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.

“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.”

Indeed although the team’s three podium finishes in the opening four rounds were as many as it had scored in the previous three campaigns put together, Howett is sure the team has yet to reach its high-point in 2009.

“We are in a results business so the highlights for me so far have been our podium finishes, particularly in Australia and Malaysia, because these confirmed our belief that we are serious contenders in 2009,” he said.

“There are plenty of opportunities remaining in 2009 so I firmly believe the highlight of the year is still to come.”

Source: ITV