Toyota will Take No Prisoners, Says McNish

Toyota would be taking no prisoners in their Formula One debut in this week's Australian Grand Prix, Toyota driver Allan McNish said on Monday.

McNish, 32, will be making his Formula One debut in the season-opening race in Melbourne on Sunday, although he has been testing with Toyota for two years.

"It is my first Grand Prix and that's a milestone in any driver's life," the Scotsman said at a special launch at Toyota's plant in the western Melbourne suburb of Altona.

"We've been working on this project for two years. The whole team is really motivated. We're going to give it everything.We take no prisoners. We want to try to keep our noses clean... but we've got to drive at 100 percent.

"I don't think you can sit back in any type of racing. You've got to attack," added McNish, who has worked as a test driver for McLaren and Benetton and won the Le Mans 24 Hours race with Porsche in 1998.

"It's very difficult to overtake other cars unless it's at a pitstop. So you've got to try to take advantage of the opportunities the first lap presents."

Great Expectations

While some critics argue Toyota, boasting an impressive Cologne-based team, were unlikely to start at the back of the grid for long, McNish said there was little point in making big predictions about the new season.

"They have said that in three years they want to be fighting for points and in five years they want to be hopefully fighting for race victories, and if you win enough of those you win a Championship," McNish said.

"But I think it's silly to say right now that we expect "x" out of the first year because really at this moment in time, we don't rightly know.

"Also we've seen too many people trip up over those sorts of things in the past."

McNish's co-driver will be 35-year-old Mika Salo from Finland, who has 93 grand prix starts to his credit and was also a Toyota test driver last year.

McNish said Toyota would treat 2002 as a learning year.

"It won't sit very nicely if we're sitting on the last row of the grid. If that's the case, that's the case, and we've got to develop from there," he said.

Asked if Toyota might be regarded as easy pickings for some of the smaller teams like Minardi, McNish said:

"I think it's very naive if anyone looks on it like that."