Allan McNish: Going the Distance

Last weekend's Monza round of the Le Mans Series was incident-packed to say the least, and I was nearly caught up in the most dramatic moment of all, when my friend Stephane Ortelli had an enormous crash at the Rettifilo chicane, late in the race.

I had just turned in to the first right-hander after the start-finish straight and was starting to get the car lined up for the second part of the chicane, when I saw a cloud of dust out of the corner of my eye. I immediately pulled out wide and lifted off in case someone had spun on the entry and was going to come across the track in front of me.

Then as I got the car straight I saw him - and it was obvious it was Steph because of the helmet - cart-wheeling across in front of me. I had to avoid bits of gearbox, wings, suspension and Christ knows what else, that was dancing around.

There was a split-second when I thought about stopping the car and getting out. But what could I do? The reality is that I'm a driver, not a doctor. I then radioed the Audi team and asked them to send our doctor to help, but the circuit's medical team already had it under control.

The organisers responded very quickly: the safety car board was out by the time I got to the second chicane, and they got medical assistance to Stephane very rapidly. Very soon I got a radio message that he was moving in the cockpit, so I was very, very relieved.

One thing I noticed during the crash was that the car never landed upside down - it was always rolling nose to tail or hitting the ground with its side, so I was immediately fairly sure Ortelli had escaped a head injury. In some ways, the crash went the best way possible for him.

Stephane and I won Le Mans together in 1998, and we've raced together very successfully quite a few times. In fact we've never finished lower than second when we've shared a car. From a professional point of view, we've had a good time together, but he also lives very close to me and we have a friendship away from the track.

There's always a special bond with a co-driver that goes beyond a professional relationship. You gain a very close understanding of each other, and also build a very strong emotional link - because as co-drivers in sportscar racing you ultimately have to work as one.

The relationship between two drivers in the same car is a little bit like a marriage.

When the accident happened, you could see the shock on the faces of all the people who work with Steph at ORECA, and everyone he's been teamed with in the past. Everyone was relieved when we learned he'd escaped serious injury.

At first I had no idea how close I'd come to getting caught up in the accident. On Sunday night I switched on the computer to get the latest from autosport.com, and someone emailed me a link to a video clip of the accident.

It was only then that I realised the flying ORECA Courage had passed less than a metre from the back of my Audi. That was a real shock to me. I had assumed I had seen the whole accident, but I'd only seen the second half. It made me all the more thankful.

After the accident there were a few comments about the safety of sports-prototypes, and people mentioned the famous flips that Mercedes had at Le Mans back in 1999.

But we have to remember that the circumstances then were completely different, and the regulations have since changed. The cars are now much, much more aerodynamically stable than ever before. Accidents will happen, you'll never avoid them, and the nature of the cars with their large square floor area is that they will lift up if air gets underneath. But what you can do is try to reduce the impact if that happens.

The fact that Stephane has only got a fractured ankle - an absolutely minimal injury and something that another of my former team-mates Yannick Dalmas once managed just going shopping - is a tribute to the efforts of Max Mosley, the FIA and the ACO, who have so improved car and circuit safety over the years.

Us drivers should be very, very grateful. Without the safety improvements, we would have lost one or two of our colleagues in recent years.

Earlier in the race, my Audi R10 TDi had been involved in another very dramatic accident when my team-mate Rinaldo Capello cut a tyre in traffic and had a crash on the back straight.

Again, air got underneath the car, and he did an aerobatic pirouette that the Italian Olympic team would be proud of. In fact, he showed pretty impressive presence of mind to knock it into first gear while the accident was still going on, and then drive it back to the pits.

The repairs that the Audi team carried out impressed the hell out of me. In just 15 and a half minutes, they replaced the floor, nose, plank, one of the sidepods, the exhaust particle filters, rear wing, bonnet and engine cover and one full suspension corner, and the car was back out and able to do lap times that would bring us back up to sixth position by the end of the race.

I stood and watched the mechanics from both Audi crews pulling together to fix the car. It was like ballet. They were all dancing in and out of each other, all knowing exactly which jobs each of them was going to do, but having never, ever practiced it. After all, how can you practice for an accident with damage like that? Their efforts put us back into the fight and kept our championship challenge alive.

In the television interview immediately afterwards, I might have given the impression that I was frustrated with Dindo, but really I was pissed off because I knew at once that the rest of our year would be spent playing catch-up.

Dindo Capello, Audi R10 © XPB/LAT

At that point, I was convinced we would finish out of the points. I thought we'd maybe get back up to 15th at best and would lose any chance of the championship. I never believed we could have finished sixth.

You can get annoyed and have a lovers' tiff if your team-mate drops the ball, but I've made errors before, and in any championship, every driver will make a mistake at some point every year - it's the law of averages. It could easily have happened to me rather than Dindo on Sunday. You've got to remember that, and it's hard sometimes when you're emotional and frustrated. But neither Dindo nor I crash cars often.

Even though we got back up to sixth, there's no question that the championship looks like a long shot now. If one of the Peugeots builds a run, it's going to be very hard to claw back the difference.

But so far one of them has had a problem at each race, and that was the case last year as well. Either through driver mistakes or mechanical issues, they've not had the consistency to get two cars to the front at the end of every race. So there is a glimmer of hope, and until that glimmer of hope is extinguished, I definitely will always push hard for the championship.

The race came to a controversial end when Pedro Lamy's Peugeot tangled with Mike Rockenfeller in our sister Audi. The Peugeot had just been given a stop/go penalty, but the collision left Rocky with a puncture so Lamy was able to take the penalty and still get out ahead.

It would be easy to be cynical about the crash, but even as an Audi driver I cannot 100 percent blame Pedro and say he deliberately tried to damage Rocky's car.

Did Rocky have to fight to pass Pedro when he knew he had a penalty? No he didn't. Did Pedro have to turn in on him? Probably not.

But it was a confusing time, because Pedro had just jumped a chicane, taken the lead and then given the place back again, so he might have thought the penalty was for that rather than the yellow flag infringement that he was actually being penalised for.

There are too many arguments one way or the other. I do think Pedro was very hot-headed and it was not the sort of action we would expect from him. On the flip side, I really can't say Rocky and Audi were entirely blameless.

Two things happened within half a lap, it was a big race and both wanted to win it, and they knew it was going to take some ballsy manoeuvres. Ultimately it gave the fans a really good fight, albeit not on the last lap as they had probably hoped.

Charouz Lola-Aston Martin © XPB/LAT

It proves how competitive the Le Mans Series is at the moment, and we have to be aware of the pace of the Charouz Lola-Aston Martin as well. It did a 1m34.1s, our fastest lap was only a 1m33.7s, and our sister car's best was 1m34.8s. The Lola-Aston also has good fuel mileage, and it is going to be bloody fast at Spa and Le Mans.

I think it's a toe in the water effort by Aston Martin, and I'd say they're finding the water quite nice and warm ... Maybe soon they'll decide to jump in and take a bath ...

Even though Peugeot won at Monza in the end, I think they will be looking very hard at themselves, because they were within eight laps of being beaten by a car with a fastest lap two seconds slower than their's. That's quite some advantage to lose in the course of a six hour race.

We're obviously a little bit more fuel efficient, and had better stops, but even then with their lap time advantage they still should have had it in the bag. I'm sure that led to some of Pedro's frustration. Peugeot should have been a long way ahead of us, and they weren't.

Before the race, we thought we would be closer to Peugeot at Monza, but, in qualifying at least, we were actually further away. But in the races I don't think the picture will be much different for Spa, or even Le Mans, from what you saw in Italy.

Peugeot are going to be fast, and we're going to be coming back at them. However, I can guarantee that we will come back at them. We've got a fight on our hands, but that is something that everybody at Audi is totally, 100 percent, up for.

Until next time,