“It's clear that Peugeot are going to be very strong at Le Mans, so if we can have a chance to get a sniff and see how good they are and where their strengths and weaknesses are [first] it will be very helpful. However, saying that, when we're doing it to them they're doing it to us as well, but I think both companies – both teams, if you like – are very concentrated and very focussed and they both want to win.
“That can't be bad for anybody, because it just means we're going to have to step up our game to make sure we beat them, and they're going to have to do the same, and the winner I would say is going to be the fans because they're going to see some excellent racing.
“Unfortunately it's not 100 per cent confirmed yet that the driver line-up is going to be in America or Europe for myself, but I certainly would like to race in Europe there's no question, and if I can come back to
Silverstone – having won that particular 1,000km race twice, in 2004 and 2005 – I think it would be very nice to have a hat-trick of wins.”
The 38-year-old's main priority, though, he underlines, will be seeing off an LMP2 onslaught as he bids to defend his hard-fought ALMS crown that he and Capello clinched for the second consecutive year – and the Scot's third outright – in 2007.
Even more significantly still, he has a record to set straight in northern France in mid-June. After he, Capello and ‘King of Le Mans' Tom Kristensen had led the legendary La Sarthe endurance classic for almost 17 hours last year, all of McNish's dreams of a second triumph to accompany that which he had achieved with Porsche ten years ago disintegrated before his eyes when a loose wheel put his Italian team-mate heavily into the wall at the high-speed Indianapolis corner – and out of the race.
