Interview: McNish Waits for Formula One Break

David Coulthard was one frustrated Scot at Sunday's British Grand Prix. Allan McNish was another.

But there was a gulf separating Coulthard, McLaren's Championship contender whose title hopes are fast receding, and his compatriot and Formula One hopeful. Coulthard, whose race ended shortly after a first corner collision with Italian Jarno Trulli's Jordan, was only a reluctant spectator at Silverstone in a contest he could easily have won.

McNish, the 31-year-old Toyota test driver who remains on the outside looking in, was clearly longing to be on the starting grid. "Initially I didn't find it frustrating at all... but now it's got to the point where you come to a few races and you smell it, you feel it and you want to be in it," he said in an interview outside the paddock.

Toyota are due to make their Formula One debut next season as the 12th team, but until then they must make do with a motorhome parked away from the inner sanctum and their established grand prix rivals. Finnish Formula One veteran Mika Salo has been confirmed as one of their drivers for 2002, but McNish must wait for a contract before the turnstile allows him through as anything more than a visitor.

A former Le Mans winner, he has not raced since last year and has had to suffer continued speculation linking other Formula One drivers to a big-spending team with plenty of resources in their war chest. "Is the signature on the dotted line? No, it's not quite at the moment," the Scot said. "But it's got to be sooner rather than later from everybody's point of view. Anything like this that has still got an element of being up in the air isn't ideal."

McNish spoke to Toyota Motorsport boss Ove Andersson when he heard the rumours linking drivers such as Brazilian Rubens Barrichello and German Heinz Harald Frentzen to the Cologne-based team. Andersson, who said earlier this year that he expected Salo and McNish to be his drivers in 2002, gave reassurances that they were just speculation. Both Barrichello and Frentzen subsequently re-signed for their Ferrari and Jordan teams respectively.

McNish said he felt he had shown in recent testing that he deserved the drive. "I don't think it's a case of my having to prove myself now," he said. "They know me and they know my capability in the car. Everything has gone to plan and in the direction that we thought it would go."

The rumours also showed how wary many people are of Toyota, the world's third largest carmaker. McNish warned that Toyota, already attacked by tail-enders Minardi for signing their technical director Gustav Brunner, could expect a hostile reception next year. "I think the knives are out for any new team coming in, there's no question. Nobody likes to have anyone coming in to potentially spoil a party," he said.

"As much as Toyota wants to be in Formula One, I think Formula One wants Toyota as well. However the teams that are involved are obviously trying to protect their own position but I think we'd expect that. The competition on a Sunday afternoon at two o'clock is pretty ferocious so I don't think we should expect any of the other teams to open up their doors and say 'Come on, Welcome let's go and have some fun.'"

Andersson was quoted in the Swiss magazine Motorsport Aktuell this month as saying that his team were being treated like outcasts. "We are not welcome in Formula One," he said. "None of the other teams will have us as a member of their little club."

McNish won Le Mans in 1998 and the American Le Mans series last year, but his Formula One experience is limited and he admitted Toyota had been wary initially of being 'lumbered' with an uncompetitive driver. He was a test driver for both McLaren and Benetton and seemed destined to break in as a youngster until a big accident in a Formula 3000 race at Donington Park in 1990 left a spectator dead. His Formula One career stalled after that.

"To some extent, probably in about 1995 or '96, and especially when I got involved in sportscars, I thought well maybe it (Formula One) is not going to happen," he recalled. "But I wouldn't really say I've been waiting on it for the last five or six years, I've been getting on with my own career and programmes and Formula One's sort of gone on."

The big question, yet to be answered, is whether it will go on with or without McNish in 2002.