Toyota Still Way Off the Pace, Says Salo

Toyota have a strong engine but are still way off the pace less than two months before their Formula One debut, says Finnish driver Mika Salo.

The experienced 35-year-old added however that rain and low temperatures in Barcelona this week had prevented the Grand Prix newcomers from making meaningful comparisons at their first test with rival teams.

"It is absolutely a waste of time," he told reporters on Thursday, commenting on a frustrating morning at a cold and cloudy Circuit de Catalunya. "If someone could build an indoor track somewhere where it's nice and 30 degrees inside it would be perfect.

"It's right to test here but it (the weather) is very hard for us because all these other teams already have all the information they need from previous years while we have nothing."

Salo was testing alone for Toyota on Thursday after British teammate Allan McNish returned to the team's home test track of Le Castellet in southern France. The Finn said the two drivers were getting on fine and needed to share all the information they could.

"He is a good guy and we get along quite well. I talk to him a lot on the telephone," he said. "At this point it would be stupid for us to start hiding the things that we learn because we are way off the pace at the moment.

"I am happy it's Allan and nobody else in the team at the moment," added Salo.

Engine Reliable

The new season starts in Melbourne with the Australian Grand Prix on March 3.

"For sure we are a lot behind at the moment and we are just trying to catch up," said Salo. "But everyone else is going forwards as well and we have to do double-sized steps to catch up. I think we have a big enough company and lots of good people so I'm sure that they can do it."

Salo said Toyota had a lot of work to do with setup and aerodynamics but he was not worried, saying last year's prototype car was "a toy" compared to the 2002 version launched last month. He explained that the big problem last year had been consistency and hoped that would improve now.

"We make progress quite well and suddenly we have one day with a really big drop again. We just have to try to get rid of those drops and to keep it going up all the time. The engine side is fine," he added. "We haven't blown any engines all year...we've done a couple of race distances non- stop and it's been fine.

"So I am not so worried about reliability. Some other things are a bit more worrying. The engine is strong, it feels good and driveable and they know how to change settings very easily. It's good that the engine side works, it takes a lot of stress out of the other things that we do."