McNish: Audi's the team to beatposted in LMANS13 | 06 | 2012
SCOT ALLAN McNISH, bidding to win the Le Mans 24-Hours for a third time, believes his all-new Audi e-tron quattro diesel-electric hybrid is the car to beat.
"I wouldn't be starting the race on Saturday if I didn't believe that," he said today before heading out for the opening official test session.
"I came away from the test earlier this month feeling very confident that we have made big improvement with the car from last year.
"Aerodynamically it's a huge improvement and the guys have done a really good job there: we've got a much more consistent base to go into race week than we had last year.
"We've got a car we feel we can attack with and get on with it. I came away with quite a light feeling in terms of our performance, and how our No2 car can get to grips with it.
"I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into the action at the weekend."
And McNish, who survived a horror crash at Le Mans 12 months ago, has welcomed the increased competition generated by the return of Toyota.
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"I think it's actually good news for us!" the 43-year-old from Dumfries, and partnered by team-mates Tom Kristensen and Dindo Capello, continued.
"I've got to be honest, Peugeot pulling out was a huge disappointment, but having Toyota back for Le Mans is terrific, because we want the competition and we need it.
"If you remember the recent top 10 Le Mans victories, none of them were runaway wins were they? We need that as much as the spectators, it's what makes it tick!"
And the diminutive Scot isn't ruling out Toyota — the manufacturer he raced for in Formula One — grabbing pole position for the race.
"The Toyota proved in testing that it's quick, which I knew all along that it would be," he said. "It finished the day just 1.5secs behind the Audis, plus it ran reliably for the whole day.
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"The two things I took out of it were, one, it was pretty quick all the time and it had very good top speed. It was consistently about 8-10 km/h quicker than we were.
"And Alex Wurz was on a pink middle sector when it got red-flagged at the end of the session. If you just make the average of the personal bests on his last lap, then he probably would have been first or second quickest overall.
"You can say they are right there in the ballpark, because they have high top speeds, they have got 15-litres more fuel capacity so they have got a wider strategy window, and they seem to be quite reliable from what I saw from eight hours of testing.
"Believe me, they're not there just for fun and entertainment."
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Jim McGill
Caption: Allan McNish (right) shares a laugh with Audi team-mates Tom Kristensen (left) and Dindo Capello prior to today's opening test session for this weekend's 80th Le Mans 24-Hours