McNish hopes for trouble free test

McNish was part of the team that drove the R10 to victory in Sebring's prestigious 12-hour race back in March. However, the sister R10 had to retire after four hours with overheating problems.

The Scot, who is competing in the full American Le Mans Series this season for the German manufacturer, is optimistic that tomorrow's test day can be used effectively and that they won't suffer reliability problems tomorrow or in the race itself.

"That's the main point of this race - you've got to be on the circuit, not in the pits fixing things," McNish told autosport.com. "With a new car, you always get some issues. There's never one that comes out of the box and it's totally reliable straight away.

"The R8 [the R10's predecessor], when we started in Sebring in 2000, we did have some problems. In Le Mans, here, we had some gearbox changes and rear end changes.

"But with the R10 TDI, we've only had what I would probably call teething problems, not anything that might require a big programme change.

"Hopefully, we've got all those ironed out now, because two weeks before the race, if you haven't, then you've got some big problems ahead."

The Scot admits he will be closely watching the opposition during tomorrow's eight-hour test session because he can't predict how quick the car will be against the competition.

"We're going to find out, really, over the course of this test weekend where we're actually are relative to the opposition," he added.

"Because up until now, we don't really know how competitive Pescarolo and Creation and Courage are. We know from the Le Mans Series and from last year, they were very, very strong. But we don't know how we actually compare against them."