Allan McNish: Going the Distance

It's ten years since I won the Le Mans 24 Hours and looking back, it all seemed so easy then! The truth is that I've been trying to win the bloody thing again ever since.

My perspective of the old place has changed over the years, but when I'm racing at La Sarthe in the middle weekend in June, it still gives me the same buzz it always has. When you sit and watch the cars coming out of the last corner and roar under the massive grandstands, you can feel the history and emotion flooding through the place.

And Le Mans is still a superb circuit to drive on. It's full of meaty corners that require big balls, and that's a challenge you look forward to.

But one thing I can say without equivocation, is that having come so close on quite a few occasions now, it's a bloody hard place to conquer.

In '98, myself, Stephane Ortelli and Laurent Aiello had a good car (the Porsche 911 GT1-98), that was reliable and we ran smoothly all the way through. That's all it took to win it. We thought:

"Fantastic, I like this thank you very much. We'll have more of the same please!"

But slowly, a harsher, more wicked side of Le Mans has taken a big bite out of me since then.

For example, in 1999 we were going well in the Toyota when Thierry Boutsen hit a backmarker and crashed during the night. Then in 2000 we had a gearbox problem on the Audi R8 and we had to change the whole rear-end.

In 2004 a GT car blew its engine right in front of me at the Porsche Curves and myself and JJ Lehto went off in a big way. The next year my co-driver Emanuele Pirro had a problem behind the pace car and we struggled to come back after that.

In 2006 we had a misfire that cost us a shot at the race, and last year we were in the lead by miles when a wheel fell off while 'Dindo' Capello was driving.

So if you go by the laws of 'would've, could've, should've,' I'm about ready for another win. But then I say that every year.

All I can tell you is that we at Audi Sport will go out and give it everything we've got.

From a pure racing perspective, going up against Peugeot is probably the hardest challenge Audi has ever faced at Le Mans, at least in terms of pure competition with another manufacturer that has got history at the place and the same clear goal to win it.

And as much as there is this direct competition and pressure in both camps to perform, it is really good that it is a French team we are fighting against, because nationalistic pride will kick in for them naturally.

French TV is already showing Peugeot Le Mans adverts all the time and there is groundswell behind them. That is really positive for Le Mans because I think this is going to be one of the best 24 Hours.

It will be a real race. It won't be an endurance run and I don't think anyone will disappear into the distance. It will be a real nip-and-tuck race.

The last time it was this aggressively fought out was ten years ago, but it is different now because the teams and cars are much better prepared. The cars are more reliable, there is better endurance testing done and the technology is better.

The average level of the pitlane now is so superior to what it was then. Even on the drivers' side. Just look at the driver line-ups, with all the traditional sportscar names alongside all the very well-known Formula One names, you know it's going to be a great event.

It was really bizarre sitting in the drivers meeting during the Le Mans pre-test recently and looking around, it was like an F1 briefing! You had Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Jos Verstappen, Jacques Villeneuve and all the Peugeot guys and my old Toyota team-mate Mika Salo there as well.

That says a lot about Le Mans and its appeal. Jacques is coming back for another crack for one reason - he really wants to win it. If he does, he will be the only man alive to have won the F1 world championship, the Indianapolis 500 and the Le Mans 24 Hours.

The Le Mans test itself was best described as very wet! The last lap I did, I went down into Mulsanne and the car just aquaplaned. I couldn't see in front of me and I seriously considered stopping because I was floating towards something but I didn't have a clue what it was!

It didn't rain like that all the time, but it did now and then and there was only really 15 minutes when the track was dry.

That was when Stephane Sarrazin did his 3m22.222s lap. It was a fast run because he lapped at 3m22.7s, then 3m22.2s, and then did two 3m24s. So he managed four laps under the 25s bracket in one run and that was very, very impressive.

I've said before in this column that Sarrazin's Peugeot is the one to beat in terms of its driving crew. Alex Wurz is now up to speed and with Pedro Lamy they have got a fast, balanced team.

But I think all the Peugeot drivers are under pressure this year. Just witness Marc Gene's almighty shunt at the Porsche Curves, trying to match Sarrazin's time, for evidence of that.

Every corner that you travel through at 170mph plus, you know you are going quickly. You know if anything happens it is going to be a long accident, but at that particular point on the track it gets very narrow as you thread through the two lefts and down the hill.

It was a big impact and one that astounded me when I saw it later on YouTube. I knew it was a big shunt because I saw the car come back on the trailer and it looked a lot flatter than it was designed to be, but until you see footage on TV it's hard to imagine just how big the shunt was.

We have had three airborne shunts this year. My co-driver Rinaldo Capello and Stephane Ortelli both crashed at Monza and obviously there was Marc's at Le Mans.

I'm cautious about grouping them together though because they all came about through different circumstances. Dindo's was a puncture, Ortelli's wing had a technical failure and Gene probably wouldn't have crashed if Sarrazin hadn't done a 3m22s!

They all happened at high speed, so in that respect they are all similar. But these cars are meant to be driven forward, not backwards or sideways, and with a big floor area, if air does get underneath them for any reason, it turns the car into a massive wing that lifts off the ground.

Marc Gene's damaged Peugeot © ACO

I had a discussion with some of the guys at Audi about it after Ortelli's accident and it came down to one thing - what can you actually do to stop it?

The basics of these cars are that they are designed to run at high speed, and by their nature have a big floor area. So if you've got those parameters and something changes the circumstances, the only thing you can really do is to make the cars safe enough to survive an accident.

All I know for sure is that from a drivers' perspective it is not nice to see it and that I think it's irrelevant who is in the car or which team it happens to, you just don't want to see that sort of thing. We're all relieved that Marc is okay.

Can Audi make it a hat-trick of Le Mans victories with our diesel-powered R10 TDI? Well we're going all out for it. I promise you, the gap between us and Peugeot will not be four seconds come race day, and we know how to win this race better than anyone.

My team, my mechanics and my engineers have done it before, so I am in a pretty secure position, where as some of the others are probably racing into the unknown. And that is something you don't want to do at Le Mans.

The Lola-Aston Martin will be up there in qualifying and the Courages, with Olivier Panis and co at the wheel, will be there at the end of the race. But I think one of the six Audi or Peugeot diesels will run reliably and fast for the duration, and whichever one of those does that best will win the race.

Peugeot are still favourites because they have got the fastest car. But the reality is that, as we have seen in the LMS, that we will be biting at their heels. We are closing on them in terms of performance, and any unforeseen pitstops or inclement weather will be all the better for us.

It may look clear-cut on paper that Peugeot will win, but I don't actually think it will be once the race mixes up and fuel economy, strategy and tyre choices come into play. In all these areas we are very, very good.

Peugeot have gone for a very aggressive driver strategy. All of them are ex-F1 drivers, except Nic Minassian, who ironically, I rate higher than any of them.

They have gone for speed. You can see it in the car, and the way that they run. And if they manage to pull it all together for 24 Hours, then they will have done a bloody good job.

But if they do win, then they will have to have done a really good job to beat us.

Until next time,