Allan McNish: On the eve of battle

The Scotsman is returning to a race that he is passionate about, and co-drives with two Germans, Frank Biela and Pierre Kaffer. He shares the front row with his sister Team Veloqx Audi UK entry, driven by an all-British crew. After an entertaining battle for best qualifying time with Johnny Herbert, the Scot had to settle for second place on the grid.

"Obviously it's a bit disappointing," he says. "You always want to have a go. It's what we are paid to do and I don't believe any driver who says he isn't interested in the pole. It would have been nice to have a go, but with the engine change last night I decided we needed to work on the race setup in the few minutes that we had left.

"The priority is obviously the 24 Hours so you have to balance your focus. We won from the third row with the Porsche in 1998, after all!"

McNish, who drove a full season of Formula 1 for Toyota in 2002, explained how he had too much work to do when the motor was fixed to try a qualifying run.

"We'd lost the balance a bit in the first two hours, so after the engine change there were some things I wanted to try. We were almost there by the end of the session. I think we will be fine by the end of the warmup in the morning, but I hope the lack of running yesterday won't hamper us."

McNish also revealed that he sees the Champion Audi team as the favourite amongst his R8 rivals. This could come as a surprise as the team has been off the pace throughout qualifying. But the experienced McNish says that nobody should read much into that.

"If you look at it on paper they are favourites. They have got three guys who know the car very well and this race very well. They've all won either this race or a major championship. They are in a strong position as they have the most experience of the Audi at Le Mans.

"They've not been good in qualifying but if you analyse what they have done you see that they decided not to go after pole at about half past eight on Wednesday. They've been concentrating on the race setup. You certainly cannot discount them. The only weakness they have is that the team has not won a big race yet, which isn't much of a weakness."

But McNish was not about to run down the hopes of his own team, the slick two-car Veloqx Audi UK outfit.

"We've got the strength of running two cars. That can also be a weakness, because there's no point having two cars in the team if you can't run them to the same levels. But we've proven three times that we can do it properly.

"Frank has a lot of experience round here, and actually he's a good cunning head to have in our car. We can learn of the way he has done things. Pierre [Kaffer] on the other hand just gets in and drives the wheels off it - he has that sheer youthful want to drive it at any opportunity. And that's obviously a strength. So I think we've got a good balance.

"On our sister car, Johnny is obviously a very known quantity. Guy [Smith] has good experience in prototypes and can draw on his win from last year. Jamie [Davies] has won the race in a GTS car but that's a wee bit different. I think he's getting to grips with it now."

McNish will also be keeping a wary eye on the fourth Audi, entered by the Japanese Team Goh. On its driving squad it has Seiji Ara, 2003 winner Dindo Capelli and five-time winner Tom Kristensen.

"For Goh, they've got a wee bit of a history with this car here and they've got Jo Hausner working on the car. He has been on the winning Audi every time it has won, and he knows Tom and Dindo very well. I don't know much about Ara, but his lap times yesterday were much better than in pre-qualifying, so you'd have to say that he's going to be quite strong.

"As for the race, I just want us to win. I was glad to hear JJ Lehto saying that he plans to sit back and watch during the opening hour! Frank had a rough ride last year - wants to come back strong. He got in the car in pre-qualifying and was right on it. He struggled a bit at Sebring, but that was because he arrived so late for the race.

"There will be a lot of entertainment in the first hour. But it's a double-edged sword really. You have to attack if you want to win, but you also have to have the thought of being careful It will be very interesting because each car has its strengths and weaknesses. But the real truth is that I don't know how the race will go. Practice has not given much of a pointer, and time will tell. We will know on Sunday afternoon."