You could think that, having raced for Toyota in 2002, accepting a testing role at Renault would have left Allan McNish disappointed. Well, think again. At the French squad, McNish feels at home, like in a family, he feels valued, and he is happy with his job. But make no mistake, he is not planning to be a test driver forever. Will Gray talked to the Scot about life at Renault and his ambitions for the future. Exclusive for Atlas F1

Scot Allan McNish has become used to the paddock atmosphere in Formula One over the last two years and although next week's French Grand Prix will mark the first time he has sat on the sidelines since making his debut last season, it will give him plenty of time to think about his future as he seeks another chance of race success.

The former Toyota driver, who was dropped by the Formula One newcomers at the end of last year, has done half a season of testing with Renault and will be on track at this weekend's European Grand Prix. But he cares little that he will be replaced in the Renault by Frenchman Franck Montagny at Magny-Cours because he is already hopeful that he has found a route back to the grid.

Some say his role with Renault has proved he cannot cut it at the front of Formula One but he believes it has actually increased his credibility after a tough season at Toyota left him looking like a failure and cast him out on the scrapheap. In fact, McNish admits he was looking towards a new life in America before a career-changing phone call from Renault chief Flavio Briatore.

"Flavio called me and asked me to go and see him because he was wanting to do something in the Friday testing," said McNish. "It was at the end of November or the beginning of December. I was more looking towards America at that point, to be honest, and I hadn't really thought about pursuing a testing role because in general most of the teams that were talking about the Friday were the likes of Minardi and Jordan that didn't have the budget and I didn't necessarily see it as a step forward.

"Anyway, when he explained what he was wanting to do and the way in which he was wanting to do it, it became a hell of a lot more interesting. So, we had a meeting and sat there with him and Mike Gascoyne, who talked it through, and then realised it was something..."

At this moment in the interview Renault's Spanish youngster Fernando Alonso appeared and, typically, McNish could not resist making a joke with the amicable 21-year-old. "Alonso needed as much help as he could get," McNish continued as Alonso walked off. "More salary for Alonso," was the youngster's response, but the experienced McNish was quick to fire back, adding: "Less salary! More Paella."

It is exactly this relationship that explains why McNish is happy now, where he is, embedded in his new Renault family rather than with his old guardians Toyota, with whom he grew his racing career only to be unceremoniously disowned when they dropped him just when he had finally risen to the top. It was a blow to the heart but he admits, now, that he always knew it was going to happen.

"I don't think anything I could have done last year would have changed the decision they were going to make," he said as he sat in his new blue and yellow colours in the Montreal paddock and reflected on a season that failed to blossom from the promising buds he had spent time nurturing with the Japanese manufacturer during years of sportscar racing.

He still has a touch of resentment towards the men who fired him, even though he insists he is content in the sidelines at Renault this year. And what makes Toyota's decision not to re-hire him an even harder pill to swallow is the fact that this year they hired another Formula One rookie, Cristiano da Matta, who has risen through the ranks with Toyota.

Toyota was tipped to make a big rise up the grid this year and although Brazilian da Matta and his new experienced teammate Olivier Panis have managed to improve on Mika Salo's and McNish's grid positions from last year, the expected points haul has so far failed to materialise. They have missed the target in their pre-season predictions and, for McNish, the Monaco Grand Prix this year proved a case in point.

"The job that Mika and I did in Monaco last year is now looking a lot better than it did last year. We were ninth and 10th on the grid and they haven't moved forward from where they were, so I don't think it was anything to do with the drivers that they had in 2002.

"There is not much else we could have done. The big area last year was that every time we went to a new circuit it was a bit of a new adventure, there was not any experience, never mind depth of experience. We went to some circuits and the car was naturally quicker and more competitive than it was on others. It was very difficult."

Toyota are understood to have the second biggest budget in Formula One and McNish is surprised that they do not seem to have been able to translate the performance gains they have made over the winter into results on the track this season. They are ninth in the Championship with four points from da Matta's sixth place in Spain and Panis' eighth in the last race in Canada.

"I don't think they seem to be gaining from any of the experience that they had last year," added McNish. "They don't seem to know why they were quick and why they were slow at different times last year and they don't seem to know that this year either."

But McNish is not bitter. In fact, he seems to fit in well at his new home and things are going better than expected because, by a stroke of luck, his driving style matches perfectly to that of race drivers Alonso and Italian Jarno Trulli, and because of that, every one of his suggestions is listened to and he can have a direct input into the team's performance over a race weekend.

"It is lucky, it is not by design, but we all have reasonably similar driving styles and because of that if I say something is better or worse then it goes straight onto the car. It's not a case of 'well, we will have to try it because maybe he doesn't like it as much or one way or another.' That is the same with Jarno, Fernando and myself - what is better for one seems to work for the other two as well."

Moving back to Alonso, who was now sitting in the corner of the paddock area, well out of ear shot, watching some motor racing on the television. The young driver has caused a stir this year in his return to the grid after a season sabbatical testing for Renault, with three podium finishes in the first eight races of the year.

McNish spends a lot of his time observing from the paddock, just like Alonso did last year so, after half a season of watching the 21-year-old drive, just how does he rate him? "For a Spanish guy he is not bad," joked McNish, explaining: "Usually they are better at motorbikes."

In fact, deep down McNish clearly has good respect for Alonso but he believes the team are the ones to thank for his rapid rise to fame. "At the end of the day he is young and he does what we all do naturally - just drive. It is just that the team are very good and they have shielded him from all the other sort of things.

"He has extremely good engineers around him, very experienced, and he has always got a good car underneath him. All he has to do is to get in and drive it as fast as he can, and he does that very well. I think that is pretty important at his stage because he can then learn all the other things at a relatively lower pace, if you like. He is obviously very quick and he has got good potential but we will just have to see how it flourishes.

"(Kimi) Raikkonen is in the same position. He got into a car that was pretty well sorted very quickly after one season, with a group of people around him that knew what they were doing. It is totally different to the situation I was in last year with Toyota, where effectively there was no experience there at all and you are having to lead them in every step of the way."

It seems apparent, from previous comments made by Renault boss Flavio Briatore, that the team are keen on pushing Alonso into a Schumacher-style role and building around him like Ferrari have done to win the last three drivers' and four constructors' titles. That could leave Trulli out of the loop but McNish insists that, nothing he has observed during his six months with the team has indicated that there is any move towards alienating Trulli and making him a defined number two.

"I would not say that the team has migrated to one side," said McNish. "Certainly, from a technical point of view, Jarno doesn't get lesser equipment than Fernando and I wouldn't say that from a personnel point of view that there is less input or anything into one or the other.

"I have got a pretty good view of this because I am standing back and looking at it with a slightly detached point of view on both of them, and I think that the team is pretty balanced on that. Ultimately, come the end of the year, if one or other is fighting higher up in the championship then there is a natural migration which happens in every single team in the pitlane. But I wouldn't say anything is strongly there at the moment.

"Fernando is riding on the crest of a wave - he has had some good results and Jarno has been up and down. Jarno's potential has been there and it has not quite happened in the races for different reasons. Jarno has not had the roll of the dice too much so Fernando is the new man of the moment and everyone is looking for the next great person that is going to beat the current World Champion and that is always the case. Kimi is up there, Fernando is being talked about."

The fact that Alonso drew in a record crowd for his home Spanish Grand Prix is proof enough that people are talking about him. As McNish said, motorcycling has always been the crowd pleaser in Spain but Alonso's performance in the Spanish race, in Barcelona, drew in more television viewers than the MotoGP race at Jerez the following week.

There, he ran Schumacher close before finishing second, but his performances have failed to convince the man he replaced, Jenson Button, who said before the Canadian Grand Prix that the Spaniard had done "no better job" than he had at the team the previous year. Briton Button, however, never got a pole position or finished on the podium in 17 attempts and, although he missed out on spraying the champagne in the Malaysian Grand Prix last year because of mechanical failure, McNish believes his compatriot is not correct.

"I think Fernando has done a good job, and I would say he has justified his position and the decision to change Jenson for Fernando," said McNish. "Probably looking long-term future Flavio felt more comfortable with the situation. Fernando has finished on the podium a few times but it is very easy to make deductions between drivers at different times or even in the same team.

"I think Jenson is actually doing a better job at BAR than he did at Renault last year. I would have said he is a lot more settled and comfortable than he was at Renault. I think Jenson gets a lot of support from Dave Richards, it looks outwardly as if he gets a lot of support, more than any other driver did there before.

"As a driver you don't need to be looking over your shoulder to wonder what is going to be happening in the next week. So from that point of view I think Jenson probably feels a bit more loved there than he did before at Renault. And you are able to flourish in that environment."

That is something that McNish feels he has found now at Renault, and he believes that relationship is nurturing so well that, despite his age of 33, he could get back on the grid if the right drive came along.

"Me doing the job here with Renault has probably lifted my profile from what it was last year and in a bizarre way as well I would say my stock is higher than it was 12 months ago even though I was racing in Formula One at that point," said McNish.

"From a personal point of view it is good to be involved with a team and a car that is making progress, that you have an input into, and that you can see a direct result of what you say and what you do actually making it go faster on the weekend and on the Sunday. I have got to say I am enjoying it.

"The one area, obviously being a racing driver, is the fact that the Saturday and the Sunday I am not in the car. But I knew that when I signed the contract. That wasn't a surprise to me, but from a team point of view I think we are getting more out of it than we initially expected. It is working certainly better than I thought it was going to."

McNish does not see himself as a long-term test driver, and does not appear to be keen on playing the role of Ferrari's Italian test driver Luca Badoer if Briatore is, indeed, planning to develop Renault in the same style as Ferrari have developed their superteam.

But he is a canny Scot and he is not rushing to give up a good thing unless exactly the right option comes along. "I signed a one-year contract because racing is what I am about," said McNish. "But ultimately it depends on what opportunities are out there from a racing point of view because things are moving all the time. You have got to get into something that is worthwhile.

"There is no point getting into a car that is at the back of the grid because that doesn't help you - I think I have understood that enough in my career that you have actually got to be in something that can give you an opportunity to be competitive otherwise it is a waste of time and you are better off doing something like this."