JANUARY 27, 2005

Toyota looking for more juniors?

We hear from Germany that the Toyota Formula 1 team is planning to announce some new young drivers for its Toyota Drivers Academy now that Ryan Briscoe has gone off to the United States to race with Target Chip Ganassi Racing in the Indy Racing League. The programme was run until the middle of last year by Ange Pasquali but he has since departed and the scheme was taken over by Richard Cregan although no mention of it was made at the recent F1 launch.

However our spies tell us that Spain's Borja Garcia, winner of the Spanish Formula 3 series in 2004 with Racing Engineering, will be named as one of the new Toyota men. Garcia is expected to be seen racing in GP2 this year with the Racing Engineering team, although this is still to be officially confirmed.

At the same time there are stories suggesting that the ART team, which consists of Frederic Vasseur of ASM and Nicolas Todt (son of Jean Todt and manager of Felipe Massa), will be appearing in Ferrari red with sponsorship from Vodafone and some other companies with links to Ferrari. Todt Jr incidentally runs a website company which looks after the Rubens Barrichello official website plus websites for Nico Rosberg, Franck Montagny, Felipe Massa, Jean Todt's favourite charity, Sabelt, Olympus, Vodafone and TAG Heuer.

Word on the street is that ART will run Rosberg Jr and Alexandre Premat.