It comes a week after Bridgestone said it would be leaving the sport after 2010 and a few months after BMW’s exit announcement. At least BMW hadn’t signed the Concorde Agreement committing themselves to 2012. Toyota’s breach of that contract could leave them open to some kind of legal challenge from Bernie Ecclestone but, ironically, Toyota’s exit could smooth the way for the ex-BMW team to rejoin the grid next year.

The world’s largest car manufacturer revealed it had made its first ever loss of $4.74 billion last year and is predicting to lose almost double that amount this year. Ultimately this is the reason for Toyota’s announcement today.

In a statement, Toyota said that their time in F1 was an “irreplaceable experience that provided an opportunity to develop both human resources and its R&D operations,” but in a press conference Toyota President Akio Toyoda expressed his regret at not achieving the results they wanted:

Based on the current economic environment, we realise we have no choice but to withdraw. This has been a very painful decision. I offer my deepest apologies to Toyota’s many fans for not being able to achieve the results we had targeted.

Despite being one of the most well-funded teams in Formula One, Toyota never won a race and their best result was fourth in the 2005 Constructors’ Championship. This lack of success was surprising considering Toyota’s considerable achievements in Rallying, winning the World Rally Championship three times between 1993 and 1999.

So where does this leave the drivers? Both Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock were expected to move on anyway but team boss John Howett had hinted he might give Kamui Kobayashi a full-time seat next year.

Kobayashi will now be looking to one of the other teams for a job and I hope one of them picks him up. Based on his performance in the last two races I think he is the most exciting rookie of 2009.

Image: Toyota

The 2009 Championship was another very close season with six drivers from four teams winning races. Brawn dominated the opening Grands Prix but McLaren made one of the biggest comebacks ever in the second half of the season.

All through the year there was the constant presence of Red Bull and the occasional threat of a Ferrari and even Force India.

All this meant that predicting who would win or even who would stand on the podium was a dificult task. In the end, the prediction game was even closer than the Championship with a single point separating second and third places.

Thanks to a lucky couple of weeks in the Far East I actually ended up with the most points but as I was just playing for fun and not prizes my score doesn’t really count.

This means that the 2009 Champion is Andrew with a score of 173, closely followed by Sergio with 172. Despite apparently knowing nothing, Kathryn came in third with 133.

As announced, first prize is a 1:43 scale Minichamps replica of Jenson Button’s Brawn GP BGP001. Second and third will each receive a copy of the 2009 Formula One Season Review DVD.

Congratulations to the winners (email me at david@f1buzz.net to let me know where to send your prize) and thanks to everyone for taking part. I hope you enjoyed it. A special thanks also goes out to Miguel for suggesting the idea!

Only four months until next time!

Image: Brawn GP

After qualifying it looked like Lewis Hamilton would easily drive away from the two Red Bulls in the race but despite setting six consecutive fastest laps and opening a gap of two seconds on Vettel, a brake problem forced Hamilton to retire after 20 laps.

The billion dollar Yas Marina circuit looked spectacular as twilight faded into night and while there are some interesting sections to the track, including a pit exit tunnel, for the most part the race was pretty uneventful.

The most excitment came in the closing laps as Mark Webber came under attack from Jenson Button and only just managed to hold him off with some great defensive driving.

It’s hard to see how an old airfield in Northamptonshire can compete with a city that sits on one-tenth of the world’s oil reserves and whose citizens (not including foreign workers) are worth about $17 million each. But Sunday’s race showed that while money can buy spectacular, it can’t buy history and it can’t neccessarily buy good racing.

2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Race Results

Image: Red Bull

Below is a graph showing the actual top ten qualifying times as well as those times adjusted for the weight of fuel each car is carrying. The graph assumes a standard lap time cost of 0.3 seconds per 10kg of fuel.

Looking at these weights we can see that while everyone is roughly in position, Lewis Hamilton really is a lot faster than anyone else. It’s hard not to imagine Hamilton driving off into the distance on Sunday leaving everyone else behind.

Trulli looks quite fast so a podium for him isn’t totally out of the question but it is more likely a McLaren and two Red Bulls will take the final podium positions of 2009.

2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Car Weights

Image: McLaren

Lewis looked completely at home on the new circuit and as twilight faded quickly to darkness he was nearly a second faster than the two Red Bulls of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber behind him.

Speaking after qualifying, Lewis said:

The car is the best it has been all year. It was a smooth lap, and it just kept getting better and better.

Rubens Barrichello beat his team mate, and new World Champion, Jenson Button to fourth place on the grid.

Jarno Trulli got his Toyota up into sixth place ahead of the two BMWs with Rosberg and Buemi rounding out the top 10.

Ferrari had a disappointing session with Fisichella dropping out in Q1 in last place and Raikkonen only making it to P11.

2009 Formula One Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Qualifying Results

Image: McLaren

Abu Dhabi will be a race of firsts and lasts. Not only will it be the first time Formula One will visit the new Yas Marina circuit but it will also be the first time a Grand Prix has started at twilight and finished at night time. The race will start at 5pm local time and the flood lights will be on throughout the race so a consistent lighting level is maintained.

The last race of the calendar, Abu Dhabi will play host to a number of other lasts.

Some time during the race a car will make the last stop for fuel in a Grand Prix; refuelling is banned for 2010.

McLaren are hoping it will be the last win for a KERS powered car on Sunday. While KERS is still allowed under the 2010 rules, the teams have agreed not to use the energy recovery technology next year.

BMW Sauber will be contesting their 70th and last Grand Prix this weekend and unless one of the other new teams fails to show up on the grid next year it is unlikely the team will carry on under new owners Qadbak.

With the driver market still in a state of flux it is not known how many drivers will be making their last appearance on Sunday. If everything goes to plan, Giancarlo Fisichella will make way for Felipe Massa at Ferrari next year while Kazuki Nakajima and Romain Grosjean both look likely to miss out on a race seat.

Jenson Button and Brawn GP may have clinched both Championships in Brazil but with McLaren and Ferrari battling for third in the Constructors’ and Barrichello and Vettel freed from worrying about the Championship, Sunday’s race should provide plenty of excitement.

To make your predictions in round 17 of the F1 Buzz prediction game (and be in with a chance to win some nice prizes), just leave a comment on this post with your driver predictions for the race in the following format:

Pole:
First:
Second:
Third:
Fastest lap:

Remember, the deadline for entries is start of qualifying on Saturday, that’s 13:00 GMT.

Good luck!

Image: McLaren

The 23-year-old filled in for the injured Timo Glock in Brazil last weekend and managed to finish a respectable 10th.

Not only that, he wasn’t afraid to go wheel to wheel against World Champion Jenson Button (who described him as “absolutely crazy.”)

There is a lot of uncertainty in the driver market at the moment and Toyota are waiting until a board meeting on 15 November to make the final decision on whether to keep racing in F1.

Apparently Jarno Trulli has promised Toyota chairman Tadashi Yamashina that he would not make any decisions on 2010 until after that meeting but I get the impression Jarno’s seat at Toyota is not as secure as he would like. Howett said of Trulli’s position:

We don’t exclude the possibility, but there need to be one or two issues that we get straight.

I’m a bit surprised at the cool reception Howett gave Kobayashi after Brazil, saying he was “a little bit off the pace,” but compared to the efforts of Grosjean and Alguersuari I think he did a great job in his first Grand Prix.

Personally, I would like to see Kobayashi given a drive next year. I was always a fan of Takuma Sato and I can see shades of Takuma’s Banzai spirit in Kamui.

Take the Duke of Edinburgh, for example. Here’s a man who asked a native Kenyan woman who presented him with a gift: “You are a woman, aren’t you?”

HRH may have a long and distinguished history of gaffes but Bernie Ecclestone is rapidly catching him up. The trouble with Bernie is that while the Duke’s comments are frequently hilarious — “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?” (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands), Bernie’s are usually in poor taste — and not in a funny way.

The latest glimpse into the bizarre world that Bernie inhabits is his comment that the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994 was “good for F1.” This was given in an interview with Brazilian paper Folha de S.Paulo:

It was unfortunate. But the publicity generated was so much… It was good for F1. It’s a shame we lost Ayrton. He was popular, but many people became interested in F1 because of the publicity generated by his death.

Putting aside the wisdom of declaring this in a Brazilian paper, I can’t believe Bernie could say such a thing.

If anything positive came from Senna’s tragic death it was that safety has now been improved so much that Felipe Massa can be hit in the face with a piece of suspension and be back in a car a few of months later but to declare it a good thing?

Maybe something was lost in translation but Bernie has sunk to a new low with this one.

Image: Williams F1

Brawn GP also picked up the points they needed to win the Constructors’ Championship.

For the fifth time in a row the Interlagos circuit played host to the Championship decider. And what a race it was.

After a washed out qualifying that saw both Button and Vettel dropped in the first session, determined drives from Button, Vettel and Hamilton gave us one of the most thrilling races of the season.

After dispatching Romain Grosjean and Kazuki Nakajima, Button became stuck behind Toyota’s Kamui Kobayashi who was filling in for Timo Glock. The young Japanese driver in his first Formula One race put in a gutsy performance. He seems to come from the Takuma Sato school of driving; not afraid to throw his car around the track with willful abandon. Jenson described him as “absolutely crazy.” I agree! Let’s hope he gets a drive next year.

Lewis Hamilton made the most of his KERS powered McLaren by switching to a one-stop strategy when the safety car came out on the first lap. He started from 17th on the grid but drove an aggressive race, passing Alguersuari and Grosjean on a single lap before making Barrichello’s day even worse by passing him on lap 62 to finish 3rd. Hamilton’s podium moves McLaren to 3rd in the Constructors’ Championship, one point ahead of Ferrari.

Speaking of Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen proved how cool he was when a trailing fuel hose from the back of Kovalainen’s McLaren briefly turned him into a human torch. This seemed to have little effect on the Finn and he went on to finish 6th.

The new Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi looks spectacular but it’s hard to imagine it producing a more thrilling race than Brazil. Interlagos had it all: unpredictable weather, loads of overtaking, spectacular crashes, even very nearly a trackside punchup between Adrian Sutil and Jarno Trulli.

This is what Formula One should be.

2009 Brazilian Grand Prix Race Results

Image: Brawn GP

The model, a product of the recent collaboration between Lotus F1 Racing Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne and the team’s technical partners, will be used for wind tunnel testing.

Considering the team’s application was only approved a month ago they seem to be making remarkable progress although, as Gascoyne says, the car has already been in development for some time:

The  start  of  any  windtunnel  testing  is  an  important  step  in  the  development  of  a  new  Formula  1  car,  but  it  is  particularly  exciting  for  us  as  we  continue  preparations  for  our  first  season.  It  has  been  a  very  busy  time  since  our  entry  was  confirmed  by  the  FIA.

We  had  been  working  on  the  entry  for  several months so we already had aspects of the team infrastructure in place; the finances, the factory and the top  management.  Once  our  entry  was  confirmed  in  mid‐September,  we  were  able  to accelerate  our  recruitment and car development process and this is really where we are at now.

While other teams have started development on their 2010 cars, Lotus is the first to release any pictures. We will have to wait until next year to see the final paint job (and I know it’s not really the same team) but I hope they go with the old black and gold livery of the John Player Special years.