Sports-car ace, Allan McNish and team-mates, Frank Beila and Emanuele Pirro just lost out to the sister Champion Audi by six seconds at the Sebring 12 hours last weekend - the opening round in the 2005 ALMS.
Here speaking to
Crash.net Radio the Scot reflects on the frustration of being 'second best', as well as looking ahead to the Le Mans 24 hours and making his debut in the DTM...
Q:Allan. You enjoyed a hugely successful time at Sebring last weekend. Talk us through the race.
Allan McNish:It was probably one of the most exciting sports car races I have been involved with. The only one I can think of that ranked closer was last year in Monza when Johnny Herbert and I fought it out over the last dying laps of the 1000 kilometre race there in the wet and managed to be separated by half a second. But this one was after 12 hours and we were six and a half seconds apart and the furthest we were ever apart, I think, was about 40 seconds in total. It was real nick and tuck all the time with both cars in the same team changing strategy all the way through just to try and get that little bit of advantage over each other. So it certainly bodes well for Le Mans.
Q:It was a great result for Champion Audi to finish 1-2 and claim their first ever win at Sebring. Were you disappointed to finish second though?
AM:Yeah for sure - as a driver you always want to win there is no question about it. Both Frank [Beila] and Emanuele [Pirro] were feeling the same sort of thing afterwards. However saying that, from a team result point of view, as you said, it was superb and it proved the Audi R8 can still be victorious even know it is really now five years old. In the last couple of hours we knew we would be really throwing the dice and trying to see if we could gain a little bit of an advantage, which we did, we pulled the gap down from 32 seconds to 6 seconds in the last two and a half hours. There were points when the race swung in our favour and points when it didn't swing in our favour and the final one it sort of slipped away from us, which was a little bit of disappointment. As an actual race itself though, it was very, very enjoyable. I told Tom [Kristensen] I will be trying very hard to make sure the roles are reversed at Le Mans!
Q:Champion had no problems throughout the event and by the end were 20 odd laps up on the Dyson car that took third. Did you expect that? Did you expect to run without any major problems?
AM:I knew that the Audi would be reliable, because it generally has been all the way through its life. So I wasn't expecting any major issues - but you never know in a race, you can have an incident that is totally out of your control or you can have silly little problems. If my memory serves me correctly, we had one little problem, when the car didn't start on its first kick after a pit-stop, we had a problem where a Maserati was sitting behind us in the pits, so we had a pull-back and that was in reality about it. But it's these little things that obviously, after the close finish that we had, make the difference between winning and losing. But I have to say to you, I didn't ever go into the race thinking we were going to have a technical issue. I also knew if anyone else was going to beat us, they would have to run a 100 per cent perfect race.
Q:How confident are you now ahead of the Le Mans 24 hours?
AM:I think it was proved last year you can never been confident at Le Mans. You can go into it having the best car, the best team and be the quickest driver-line-up - everything and something happens, like it did for J-J [Lehto] and I, where we encountered oil without any oil flags in a sixth gear corner and went off. So I would say, certainly the Champion team, are a very strong team and the Audi obviously is the class of the field and we are going to be in a strong position. There is though going to be another Audi there as well with ORECA and they have won Le Mans before in different categories. They know what it is like and the driver line-up is looking very strong as well. So we are going to have our work cut out within the Audi group, never mind actually looking outside and looking at the Creation and the other cars as well. But I have to say after Le Mans 2004 I never take anything for granted anymore.
Q:Before Le Mans you are going to be starting your campaign in the DTM. How are things looking on that front?
AM:I'm looking forward to getting back in the car again. Obviously the focus was running a little bit in tandem with Sebring, but now that is out of the way I can focus completely on the DTM up until the Le Mans race. I'm looking to be out in the car next week, there's a test at Spa and I want to get a bit more feel for it. Obviously from my side, being new to that particular category, I've got to understand the car as well as in reality probably more even the tyres, as they seem to be the key to how they are hitting the sweet spot and being quick or not. So we will be getting more mileage under our belt in Spa next week.
