Feature: McNish Deals with Agony, Waits for Ecstasy

Allan McNish does not take kindly to being labelled an 'agony aunt'.

The Toyota Formula One driver, who finally makes his home debut at Silverstone this weekend after fearing it would never happen, sounds almost aggrieved at the suggestion.

"I'm not really an agony aunt," he said in an interview. "I'd prefer to be called an agony uncle, for a start."

The 32-year-old Scot, the only British rookie this season, has a little-known sideline to his driving duties with the world's third largest carmaker: he tries to help his Japanese fans resolve their sometimes weighty problems by offering advice.

"Toyota have got a magazine that they produce and it started off really more with people asking racing questions, 'How do you get into racing?' or 'I'm struggling with this and that'," McNish said. "And it sort of developed a little bit where they send in just general questions on life now."

"Some of them are actually pretty serious questions," the Scotsman added. "You have to actually think about it because you can't just make throwaway comments and joke about it. One guy wrote in to ask whether he should jack in his job because suddenly he found there was a lot of politics and a lot of pressure. But he really enjoyed his job."

Given the egos and insecurities prevalent in the Formula One paddock, McNish could have a nice little earner on his hands were he to set up for business at a Grand Prix weekend.

"Do you think I should set up a wee (small) stall, 6:00 to 6:30 every night, 15 quid a shot?" he asked with a laugh.

Learning Curve

But in the real world, the Scot is too busy looking for the answers to his own problems in keeping up with a vertiginous learning curve.

The oldest debutant of 2002, McNish has more experience of life and its hardships than most.

He was strongly tipped for Formula One more than a decade ago after testing for McLaren, Benetton and Lola but nothing came of it.

His career took a knock in 1990 when he was involved in a Formula 3000 crash at Donington Park that killed a spectator and, until he won Le Mans with Porsche in 1998, Grand Prix racing looked a closed door.

There were, and still are, some people who see McNish as a stop-gap likely to be replaced as Toyota seek to capitalise on a better-than-expected start to their Formula One existence by luring bigger names.

He has yet to score a point in nine races - veteran Finn Mika Salo has scored twice for the team - but he went close with a seventh place in Malaysia and eighth in Spain.

Outside Looking In

McNish raced before at Silverstone, a circuit that he has known since a schoolboy visit in the 1980s, but does not hide his excitement. "To some extent it's like your first Grand Prix," he said.

Last year McNish was on the outside looking in, Toyota parking their hospitality bus outside the Formula One paddock near the Formula 3000 cars. The Scot was able to make a few brief appearances in the paddock but otherwise found the dream and reality separated by a chain-link fence.

This year, he has reached the inner sanctum.

"I think the Toyota hospitality was closer to Magny Cours (in France) than Silverstone last year. It was a bit of a trek," he said. "There's a big difference in a lot of respects to looking from the outside of the fence in and inside of the fence out.

"When you're this part of Formula One it's really surprising how little time you have and how you want to a greater extent to get out to the other side. And everybody else is wanting to get in.

"There's some aspects that you probably don't appreciate until you are actually going through them. The one thing I didn't necessarily appreciate to the full extent was just how much on the go you are. I don't think we work as hard as the McLaren guys but it is bloody busy and you don't get five minutes to yourself. But that's part and parcel of the whole deal."

McNish said he had been pleasantly surprised by what the season has thrown at him so far.

"In terms of actually racing, driving on the circuit, it's a little bit better than what I thought it was going to be. I thought the wheel-to-wheel racing was going to be a little bit more difficult," he said. "But mid-grid you can make up a few places and overtake and that's a bit better than I thought it was going to be."

If all goes well, McNish will experience some of the ecstasy of success on Sunday. The agony can wait for the next edition of the magazine.