Allan McNish thrives in new Audi F1 role: ‘My life, my career, my hobby, my passion’

Audi racing director Allan McNish opened up on his first weekend in his new Formula 1 role after a weekend of mixed fortunes for the team.

Following the departure of Jonathan Wheately, former Toyota F1 driver and three-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, McNish took charge of the trackside operations for the first time.

Although Audi showed strong single-lap pace at the Miami Grand Prix, for a third weekend running, the team was unable to convert this into points, with reliability problems striking both cars across the weekend.

However, this did nothing to dampen the Scotsman’s enthusiasm for his new challenge.

“It was good,” said McNish. “I live to race. I’ve lived to race all my life, since I was 11-years-old. It’s what I love, it’s what gets me up in the morning, it’s my passion.

“When I say I live to race, I don’t go home happy unless we’ve won. And I know that’s not always the case, because in racing in your career, you lose more than you win. That’s just natural statistics, apart from maybe one or two.

“But the reality is that this environment is the environment that is my life, it’s my career, it’s my hobby, it’s my passion. It’s good to be here. The alternative is not.”

While McNish is not the first former driver to take the hot seat, it is less common than you may think, with engineers currently the more common personnel to take the leadership role.

However, with previous experience in leading Audi’s Formula E team to championship success, the 56-year-old did not gain the position through his driving reputation alone.

“I’m actually more nervous now than any time before,” McNish joked when facing the media.

“I’ve been at a circuit a few times. It’s not the first time, so I understand the ways of the world, so to speak.

“Clearly, we’ve got a lot of experience in a lot of different areas of the team, which is good. I knew quite a lot of the things that we were needing to work on are not operational.

“But on the other side, it’s actually the biggest event that the team has had from a marketing and communications [point of view] with events downtown, so there was a whole load of other stuff apart from what was going on here as well - the first hot laps ever, and things.”

“So it was actually across many areas, more than necessarily just the racing director operational aspect of it, which is what you have to do in the role.

“I need to maybe try and take a little bit of time back.”