There is no rushing Toyota!

By Luke Marc Carlile-Stanton
September 25 2007

So much gossip column inches have been taken up this season regarding the identity of Jarno Trulli's Team Mate for the 2008 Season. But Toyota insist that the decision will probably not be undertaken regarding the 2008 line up until the 2007 Season has been run.

With three races to go in the 2007 season, Toyota has still not finalised it's plans for the 2008 Season regarding drivers.

This was the admission of Team principal Tadashi Yamashina ahead of Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix; Toyota's home race.

The Driver Market is currently on hold due to World Champion Fernando Alonso. Alonso had voiced his unhappiness of driving at his Mclaren-Mercedes team this season, and relations between him and Ron Dennis have hot rock bottom, the pair have not spoken since the Hungarian Grand Prix nearly Two Months ago.

Many predict the double, and potentially triple World Champion will leave Mclaren to go back to his former team Renault. However in the last week a potential nuclear bomb has been threatening to hang over the driver market. Newspaper rumours suggest Alonso will leave Mclaren for Ferrari at the end of season to complete Ferrari boss Luca Di Montezemolo's dream line up of Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso. This however leaves Raikkonen's current team mate Felipe Massa out of a job and this is where Toyota becomes involved.

Media speculation links Massa to a job at Toyota should Alonso 'do a Raikkonen' and defect from Mclaren to Ferrari. Massa was seen in the Toyota motorhome during the Belgian Grand Prix weekend allegadly to open discussions with Toyota should he have to clear out his locker at the Scuderia for 2008.

Trulli's current team mate Ralf Schumacher has not had a very good year by his standards and is currently on the last year of his contract. Many drivers have been linked to his seat including Nick Heidfeld at the beginning of the year and Heidfeld's team mate, BMW-Sauber tester Tim Glock but also and most notably impressive Spyker rookie Adrian Sutil who has been linked to our team for quite some time now. Sutil however is under contract to SYpker for 2008 and any move away from Spyker would have to be consented by Spyker boss Colin Kolles.

Speaking to a German news agency ahead of Toyota's home race on Toyota's own track at Fuji in Japan, Yamashina said; "We continue to contemplate all possibilities. We have still made no decision."

When confronted on the rumours on Massa however, Yamashina claimed to ''know nothing about it'' whilst laughing it off.

So whether it is Ralf, Massa, Sutil, Glock or indeed anyone else, Toyota is in clearly no rush to announce it's plans for it's driver line up in 2008. However surely it is best to get to get it announced and out the way but also set up the team for the following season sooner rather than later...Maybe not in Toyota's eyes.

No rush 'ey guys....?