Allan McNish uncut interview

At last month's World Endurance Championship finale in Bahrain, Allan McNish sat down with AUTOSPORT to be interviewed for our regular 15 Questions magazine feature.

Typically for McNish, the candid chat that followed provided far more material than was required for that piece. In the wake of McNish's announcement on Tuesday that he is retiring from top-line motor racing, we bring you the full uncut version of what became a fascinating insight into the Scot's career and memories.

Q. Who has been your fiercest rival?

Allan McNish: David Brabham is someone who has been a thorn in my side at different points in my career; from Vauxhall/Opel Lotus, in my second year of car racing at 18, through to even just a couple of years ago at Le Mans. But, he's also one of my best friends, and it has been a long and enjoyable fight.

In terms of fiercest driving rival and hardest competitor then probably Mika Hakkinen, who was my team-mate that year in Opel Lotus, and in F3 he was one of the most gifted.

McNish and Brabham crossed paths and swords for many years © LAT

David and I have still got crosses to bear from certain things that happened in F3. At the Silverstone British F3 GP support race [in 1989] I was on pole, he was in second and we ran into the first corner together. I thought, 'Got him sorted, got him covered' and then the bugger went around the outside of me and came round the corner ahead. I thought, 'What the hell happened there?'

Eventually I caught him and won the race, but then in 2011 we were racing at Sebring, he got caught by a bit of traffic in Turn 5, maybe an hour before the end, and I overtook him around the outside. At the end of the stint after we got out we bumped into each other. I said, 'That was for...' and he said, 'Silverstone '89.' We both instantly knew what we were talking about.

It was a close battle that year, I missed two races after banging my head at Brands, and of course the title was decided in court. To be honest, both of us deserved to win it in different ways, but Brabs was a worthy winner, I have no problem with that.

Q. Who was your childhood hero?

AM: Giacomo Agostini. I grew up in a household that was really into motorbike racing. I grew up with tales of Ago and Mike Hailwood in the Isle of Man TT, which was 30 miles from Dumfries, across the water mind.

Agostini is a McNish family hero © LAT

In the '65 TT, when Ago was 25, his chain broke at the hairpin. My dad said, 'Sonny, he had tears in his eyes.' I met Agostini many, many, many years later and I said, 'Right, what about the '65 TT?' He said, 'Ah, it was my 25th birthday, I had tears in my eyes for miles after my chain broke.' I thought, 'Woo! So it's a true story.'

Q. Did you make any family trips to the TT?

AM: No, I was too young to sit on an old fishing boat to go from Kippord to Douglas, but I have been to the TT since, including for the centenary with my Dad and his best mate my uncle Eddie. It was like a reunion for them, and for me it was fantastic to see them enjoying it like they were 17 again.

Q. When were you happiest?

AM: On the podium. [Pause] When you are coming through racing for the fun of it, 17, 18, 19, that's when you were the most free, if you like. Certainly you didn't appreciate... It's different nowadays, but in that era you didn't appreciate what the work ethic needed to be. There was an element of just jollying along.

In Opel Lotus we had six weeks in Europe, just floating around between races. It was brilliant fun at 18. The opportunities we had, it was much easier to go racing than 10 years later or now, no question about that.

But you have to enjoy every time. Whatever I do, a big part of it is I have to enjoy it. Otherwise I'd rather do something else. But back then it was probably then purely the fun of driving, and the hobby and the enjoyment of competition as opposed to the element of the job, which is required the more successful you become.

David Leslie was a friend and mentor to McNish © LAT

Q. What is your most treasured possession?

AM: I don't have a most treasured possession. I have my first karting trophy; in fact I have all my trophies, except for one I lost in Sao Paolo this year. We had a party and I left it in the Audi hospitality. It's OK, the team have got it, but it's been doing a world tour. I've got all my main race or championship-winning helmets as they came off. I've got one racing suit from every year.

It's not a treasured possession as such, but one of the nicest ones, for what it signifies, is David Leslie's first overalls. David was from Dumfries, it has got Crossflags garage on it, because my dad [who was the proprietor of Crossflags] helped him a wee bit when he started racing. Also, David and his father started my career.

There is a heck of a lot of sentiment behind it, and David's 60th birthday would have been the day we won the World Endurance Championship in China. That's probably the thing, outside of my own racing.

Q. Which living person do you most admire and why?

AM: There are a lot. It will sound corny, but I don't tell her often enough: I admire my wife for putting up with me, my lifestyle, having to look after two kids and bring them up to be a very well-mannered boy and girl. As my father said, at times she's like a single mother, because of my travelling and racing.

I think you have to admire so many of the wives and girlfriends in racing paddocks because they do live a reasonably solitary life at the expense of us doing something we enjoy and love, because we are kind of selfish people.

McNish says Hoy is reminiscent of a racing driver © XPB

But in terms of people in the public eye, I'd say Chris Hoy. I tend to look at people I can associate to, and I'd choose him for having the drive and determination to do what he did in the Olympics over such a long period.

The other day I saw a picture of him in a line-up of BMX riders when he was a young kid, and I sent him a note saying he looked like a young racing driver, because he was holding a helmet and it was tilted to show the sponsor logo cropped properly - he was a true professional even then. Someone going to the nth degree to be the best in their sport, doing everything to the best of their ability, I can relate to that. But it's a tough one.

Q. What's your most embarrassing moment? Or at least, what's one that you'd be prepared to see in print in AUTOSPORT?

AM: I think they've probably all been in AUTOSPORT, that's the problem! There are times when you were a kid, when you've done something wrong when you were six or seven and it still gives you the shivers. I can remember coming back home when it was dark, and we lived down a quiet country lane and I had no lights on my bike and my mum was really angry with me.

In terms of racing, probably the ones readers will think of is having a wee shunt on the way to the grid at Petit Le Mans in 2008. However, the one that is the most embarrassing for me was the Birmingham Superprix street circuit in '87 when I was in Formula Ford. In my total naivety I only looked at the programme to see the circuit map, saw that it turned left, chicane bit, down to a hairpin, then went right, turned left, left, and then turned left onto the start-finish straight again. Pretty easy, eh? It cannae be that difficult.

On my out-lap, when I arrived at the last corner, being 17 and full of testosterone, I found out the track actually turns right and then left. There was a little kink. I'd gone charging in there and by the time I realised it was 'goodnight'. Plonk. Straight into the barriers.

Erik Comas shows the correct way around the streets of Birmingham © LAT

That was probably one of the best lessons I have had, as now I always walk or run the circuit, even if I've been there 25 times. But it was one of the most embarrassing, having to get out and trudge back to the pits for a severe bollocking that was about to be administered by father Leslie.

Q. Did you admit your mistake, or were you tempted to pluck something from the racing driver's handbook of excuses?

AM: I had to come clean, I couldn't say a rabbit jumped in the way: I was in the middle of Birmingham.

Q. Who would play you in a film role of your life?

AM: Many people have said over the years that I have a massive resemblance to Brad Pitt, in his younger days. I can see that - after a few whiskies.

But I'd probably go for Begbie [the character played by Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting]. There is a slight physical resemblance, but his character is also very direct. He has an edge to him - in terms of racing I have that very clear win-or-lose feistiness. Also the Johnnie Walker ad Robert Carlyle did is stunning.

Q. What's your favourite smell?

AM: The freshness of peppermint.

Q. What's your guilty pleasure?

AM: Chocolate. None of this fancy Swiss rubbish that Marcel [Fassler] tries to pass off as real chocolate, just good old-fashioned Dairy Milk.

Fassler continues his efforts to improve McNish's chocolate sensibility

Q. Who would you most like to say sorry to and why?

AM: I don't know. I was brought up that if you make a mistake or do something wrong you apologise and you basically take it on the chin and move on. Obviously, I've had disagreements where I didn't think I did anything wrong and the other party doesn't think they did anything wrong, but I don't think there's anybody. Maybe someone will come out of the woodwork and suggest that maybe I should apologise!

Q. Perhaps that's not a massive surprise as you're renowned for being a nice guy...

AM: Well, there are a few people who would dispute that.

Q. Really?

AM: Well, there have been some situations that I've had with people on track. I remember with [Johannes] van Overbeek at Lime Rock, I didn't realise that we'd had a slight touch as I went past and that he went off. As soon as I knew I went straight over to speak to him. I will make hard manoeuvres and do things, but I know that you don't intentionally compromise someone.

Q. What does success feel like?

AM: A lot better than failure.

Q. I think this question also depends on your definition of success...

McNish and Capello weren't in the epic 2008 ELMS title fight, but still had a memorable year © LAT

AM: Yeah, it depends how you define success. The world championship this year was a massive deal, but in terms of satisfaction from driving it was the same as when we finished third in the European Le Mans Series in 2008, as I don't think we did anything wrong there. There was nothing Dindo [Capello] and I could have changed to have done anything different.

What I will say is, the enjoyment or long-term satisfaction of winning a race or championship gets shorter and shorter-lived, the more you do it.

Q. I remember touring car racer Steve Soper was quoted towards the end of his career saying winning had become normal, and if he didn't win it was a problem.

AM: Well, I once asked [Audi Motorsport boss] Wolfgang Ullrich for a bonus for winning races, and he said, 'I pay you to win races, why should I give you a bonus?' which was a fair statement. We are paid to win races, so we shouldn't get an extra pat on the back for doing it. But we should celebrate and enjoy them as they don't come every day.

It's down to the individual. I've won races I should have lost and lost races I should have won. There is a personal satisfaction from doing the job 100 per cent and getting the best out of everything and your team, and sometimes that can be from a second or a third or fourth.

Q. What has been your biggest disappointment?

AM: The hardest one to get over was not winning the karting world championship in 1985. That took six or nine months to get over.

Q. Who were your chief rivals?

AM: Michael Schumacher, Andrea Gilardi, Laurent Aiello, Yvan Muller, a few guys like that. I think the German disappeared off the face of the earth but the rest went on to have good careers...

I was on the front row, it was the only one I did, and Michael and Andrea had done two each before. The way it worked, there were three or four heats, then a pre-final and final each day for two days. The amalgamation gave you the grid for the final.

I won my semi, which put me on the outside of the front row, and I got beaten into the first corner by Michael and Andrea, which was slight naivety. I had only been beaten off the front row in my karting career twice in my life, and that was one of them. I was so annoyed. I kicked myself forever for that. I only did one, and I was only ever going to do one.

Q. When you say you kicked yourself...

Karting rivals Schumacher and McNish briefly met again in Formula 1 © LAT

AM: Well, I would have won the race. If I'd got into the first corner in the lead I would have won, instead I finished third.

[Marcel Fassler walks past our desk in the Bahrain media centre]

AM: YOUR CHOCOLATE IS SHIT!

Q. But was that because there was something you did wrong, or could have done differently, or was it just Michael being exceptional?

AM: All Michael did was follow Andrea. In the UK you went when the flag went up. In Europe, when you're fighting for the world championship, you went and hoped it wasn't called off [for a jumped start]. I waited for the flag and it was naivety.

Q. If you could edit your past, what would you change?

AM: I don't look back, I look forward. Yes, without doubt there were things I would do differently, but what I did like Birmingham Superprix, you want to edit them out to make a perfect career, but in reality those make you what you are. Those define how you evolve. Therefore I would take all the good and the bad. The bad makes the good even more special, and the bad keeps your feet on the ground and allows you to enjoy the good a little bit more.

Q. How do you relax?

AM: I don't. That is something my wife has beaten into me. She has put, basically, a 6pm curfew on my computer and telephone, saying the office is closed, otherwise I would be working trying to do this or that. I try to do something better than I did last time or I go into the details. I've woken up at 3am in the morning sometimes to go through reports and try to understand them.

Kelly McNish has imposed work curfews on her husband © LAT

The way I've now learned to relax is reading books. I never read books until I was 20, when I was going to Japan for McLaren [testing]. It was either a Japanese phrase book or The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy. As Sean Connery was a pretty good actor then, it was 'Red October' here we come.

Q. Going slightly off on a tangent, what was testing for McLaren like?

AM: [Emanuele] Pirro did it before me, then I did the development of the Honda V12. We went out to Japan for three or four days every month for 18 months.

Q. Wasn't Jonathan Palmer supposed to be testing the V12, but he had a big crash at Le Mans?

AM: No, he was doing the active suspension, which never really worked. We had two cars out there and then there was a third, which was the Mugen, which was in the back of an F3000 car and then became a Formula 1 engine.

Basically you would do all the various tests for mapping and at the end of the test you would do race distances, so it was great for mileage, but going to Suzuka was quite daunting for a wee 20-year-old boy, who had only flown outside Europe once to Macau. From that side of things it was a huge experience for me, very enjoyable, educational from a driving point of view and from an 'understanding-what-it-takes' point of view as well.

McNish on McLaren F1 testing duties at Estoril in 1990 © LAT

Q. Did it help or hinder your F3000 performances? Or was your Lola so bad in the second year (1991, in which Allan finished 16th in the championship and failed to qualify for two races) that it didn't make any difference?

AM: No, it probably hindered a little bit, there's no question, because of the differences in time zones and everything else. You were constantly backwards and forwards. I flew back from Japan to go to Le Mans for F3000, literally arrived on the Thursday and went straight to the Le Mans race. There were times when I would have said it did help, but times it hindered as well. But when you get the opportunity, you can't say no, can you? If you do say no, you might never get the opportunity again.

Q. When was the last time you cried?

AM: On the slowing-down lap in China. I'm not the most emotional chap in the world, but there is no question on the slowing-down lap in China.

You release the emotions, it's all over, and the other thing is it's roughly four minutes. It's just you and the car, the car that you've been with for all of the races, all of the tests, good times, bad times, and for me a lot of things run through your head, and one of them was that I'd been waiting on this since the first time I did a world championship, in karts in 1985. And I'd finally got it.

By the time you get back to the pits you've obviously manned up a bit. You can't show your emotions to your team-mates, not until we'd had a wee drinky-poo later on, then we had a cuddle. That was the last time.