Motor racing-Ralf Schumacher sounded out Toro Rosso, says Berger

ISTANBUL, Aug 25 (Reuters) Ralf Schumacher sounded out Toro Rosso about driving for the Formula One backmarkers next season, co-owner Gerhard Berger said today.

However, the former race winner added that Schumacher, younger brother of Ferrari's retired seven times world champion Michael, made clear that he wanted to stay at Toyota if possible.

''Yes, Ralf came to us. We spoke with him. But in the discussion it was very clear that his priority is Toyota and our priority was the line-up that we have now,'' Austrian Berger told a news conference at the Turkish Grand Prix.

''If something had gone wrong in our priorities, there was room to discuss further. That's all that happened. We had no closer discussions.'' Schumacher, 32, is good friends with Toro Rosso team boss Franz Tost from their time together at BMW. He took all six of his grand prix wins with BMW Williams.

Toro Rosso have signed 20-year-old German Sebastian Vettel and France's triple Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais for 2008 in place of American Scott Speed and Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Vettel has already taken Speed's place while Bourdais joins next year.

Schumacher is out of contract with Toyota at the end of the season and the Cologne-based team are in no hurry to finalise their line-up.

''We're in discussion with Ralf and we're studying the driver market and Ralf is still definitely on our list,'' Toyota motorsport president John Howett told a news conference at the Istanbul Park circuit yesterday.

''He's doing a very good job at the moment, as we've seen in the last two or three races, and we're just not prepared at this moment to make a decision, which is very tough and I have a great deal of personal sympathy with Ralf.

''We're waiting to see what moves and I can assure you that Ralf is on our list. But we feel that we can wait longer.'' Schumacher has scored five points from 11 races this season and is 14th overall. Trulli has seven.

REUTERS TB VV1519