OCTOBER 24, 2003

McNish and Ferrari

Peter Sauber has said that Felipe Massa will be one of his drivers next year but there has still not been an official announcement about the future of Ferrari's second test driver.

Peter Sauber has said that Felipe Massa will be one of his drivers next year but there has still not been an official announcement about the future of Ferrari's second test driver. If he is eventually confirmed at Sauber this will create a job at Ferrari as the team needs to have two test drivers to keep up with all the development work it does in an F1 season. This year the team has used Luciano Burti on occasion but there have been stories in recent days that the Italian team may be looking at hiring Scotsman Allan McNish.

McNish is one of the most experienced test drivers in the sport having worked with McLaren between 1990 and 1992. He then joined Benetton and tested for that team between 1993 and 1995. After a brief involvement with the disastrous Lola F1 program he turned his attention to sports car racing and in 1998 won the Le Mans 24 Hours for Porsche. In 1999 he joined Toyota to race the GT-One sports car and to develop the Toyota's F1 cars which enabled him to become a full-time F1 driver at the age of 33. This year he has been testing for Renault.

McNish says that his priority is to race next year but if he cannot get a drive he will settle for a testing work.

The last Scotsman to drive for Ferrari, incidentally, was Johnny Dumfries who test drove for the team in 1985 season before being signed up by Team Lotus for 1986.