The single F1 season of a British sportscar great

It’s 20 years since Allan McNish made his long overdue Formula 1 debut with the brand-new Toyota team. But the circumstances were hardly ideal for the Scot, whose spell in F1 would prove to be all-too brief before making a successful return to sportscar racing

It’s fair to say that Allan McNish didn’t fit the typical profile of a Formula 1 debutant when he lined up on the grid for the 2002 Australian Grand Prix with the brand-new Toyota team. Aged 32, the Scotsman hadn’t raced a single-seater since 1995 and was already well established as a top sportscar talent, having won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1998.

Two decades have now passed since McNish’s one and only season as a grand prix racer before Toyota unceremoniously dropped the axe on both him and team-mate Mika Salo. Reflecting on a campaign in which his best finish of seventh in Malaysia wasn’t enough to score points – 2002 was the last year in which only the top six were eligible to score – McNish concedes that “it was probably a bit too late coming in my career”.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award. He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual or niche, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

He lives with his wife and children in Plymouth, England.