Luca Marmorini will be missed by Toyota according to Howett

The president of Toyota Motorsport, John Howett, expressed disappointment at Marmorini’s recent announcement to leave the Japanese F1 team before the 2009 season.

Luca Marmorini had been working at Toyota F1 Racing since the 1999 season. He led the engine department of the Japanese team. The Italian decided to leave Formula 1 following the recent measures dictated by the FIA freezing engine development.

Marmorini, who is replaced by Kazuo Takeuchi, did not want to manage the development of the team’s KERS, the new energy recovery system during braking.

« Personally, I am very sad that he left us », commented Howett on the official Formula 1 website. « I think he was frustrated on the one hand because there is no longer any real engine development and on the other hand because he disagreed with certain strategic decisions. This particularly concerns our rather conservative approach on KERS. »

« In fact, we are in a situation where we didn’t want to lose him and where he didn’t want to leave us, but too many things have taken our paths apart… » concluded the Englishman.

Takeuchi will therefore be in charge of developing the KERS, which is currently the most delayed point in Toyota’s program, despite the team having already tested it in Algarve last week with more or less reliable results. John Howett also stated that the probability of using the KERS in the first race of the season is very low…