Toyota Formula One Team responds to the Economic Crisis in the Auto Industry

March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Toyota Motor Corp.’s Formula One team is flying economy class and scrimping on catering to help it ride out the recession.

Five years after Ford Motor *** Jaguar cars sported diamonds in their nose cones at the Monaco Grand Prix, yesterday’s season-opening race in Melbourne heralded a more austere approach as teams try to cut spending that the sport’s ruling body said totaled $1.6 billion last year.

“There’s a need to be a lean operation,” John Howett, president of Toyota Motorsport, said in an interview in Melbourne. Team members have “changed class in flights in many cases. In hospitality, our own catering, we’ve reduced costs by roughly 50 percent.”

Toyota is among teams seeking to justify their presence in the most-watched motor sport after another Japanese carmaker, Honda Motor *** quit Formula One in December because of plummeting sales. They’re going beyond a pledge to cut budgets by 30 percent by banning in-season testing, sharing data and making parts last longer.


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