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LIGHTS TO FLAG: Allan McNish on working with Senna, an F1 chance that came ‘too late’ and helping Audi join the grid
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Allan McNish is best known for his success in the sportscar world, having won the 24 Hours of Le Mans on three occasions and bagged plenty more prestigious trophies worldwide. But the proud Scot also has an F1 tale to tell with his eye-opening stint testing for McLaren-Honda during their golden era and a sole season racing for Toyota in the early 2000s. For our latest Lights to Flag feature, McNish shares all about his journey to the top across multiple disciplines and how he remains heavily involved in the sport to this day…
Inspired by the Isle of Man
McNish grew up in Dumfries, a town in the southwest corner of Scotland, with his father – who ran a local car garage – sparking an interest in racing via annual trips across the Irish sea to watch one of the biggest motorbike events on the calendar.
“You could see the Isle of Man from the shoreline, so the TT races were always a big thing,” says McNish. “My dad used to go across on a boat – any sort of boat, whether it was a fishing boat or whatever – and made the journey every year from the late-1950s all the way through to the late-1970s.
“I grew up with stories of the TT, of Mike Hailwood, Giacomo Agostini and John Surtees, so it’s a drip feed thing. I got a little bike and did a couple of races of motocross, but because I was short, my feet didn’t touch the ground – they didn’t even touch the pegs! So, my mum was less than impressed about it, and that’s when I started karting.”
People ask, ‘Why was this group so successful? Was it the water, the roads?’ It couldn’t have been the roads, because we weren’t allowed to drive then, and we couldn’t drink whisky at that point either!
Allan McNish
Great Scots
McNish credits an iconic organisation – namely the rebooted Ecurie Ecosse racing team, who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans back in 1956 and ’57 – and the well-known Leslie family, who were heavily involved in motorsport through David senior and junior, for their support and guidance during this defining phase.
“Ecurie Ecosse was restarted by Hugh McCaig and they sponsored my dad’s cousin, David Duffield, along with David Leslie, who my dad helped as a mechanic when he started his racing career, then myself, Dario Franchitti, David Coulthard – our generation of drivers coming through.
“People ask, ‘Why was this group so successful? Was it the water, the roads?’ It couldn’t have been the roads, because we weren’t allowed to drive then, and we couldn’t drink whisky at that point either! But we had people who believed in us from an early age and we all stuck together to some extent.”
He continues: “When you drive seven hours to Rye House just north of London, your main competitors are predominantly from that area. For them, if it didn’t go very well, it was a 30-minute drive home and then they were watching telly at 7 o’clock. For us Scots, it was a six-hour drive, and a six-hour debrief.
“At the time, it didn’t seem like a debrief. It could have been seen like a b******ing or whatever it happened to be, but it was, in effect, a six-hour debrief. So, you had a six-hour pre-brief going down there and a six-hour debrief coming back. I suppose we did analyse things maybe more than everybody else, but it also meant that you were very, very committed.”
McNish in his British F3 days, where he would win, and then lose, the title
Getting used to single-seaters
With a competitive karting record under his belt, which included Scottish and British titles, McNish soon turned his attention to single-seaters – Formula Ford 1600 the first step on the ladder in 1987 but proving to be a more challenging transition than he anticipated.
“If I’m very honest, I didn’t really enjoy it,” he admits. “I came from a kart with a lot of grip, with a driving style that suited grip, and then I got in a Formula Ford, I had to change gear, it slid around everywhere… I didn’t really know what I was doing, even if I did win a senior race.
“At the end of the year, Marlboro, with their young driver programme, invited me to a test in a 2000 car at Donington Park. I got in that and thought, ‘Now I understand it’. The more power and the more downforce I got through my career, the better it seemed to suit me.”
McNish and another future F1 driver in Mika Hakkinen were subsequently signed to Marlboro’s programme and got placed in the 1988 Formula Vauxhall Lotus and Formula Opel Lotus Euroseries championships – the pair living together and driving to races in a Cavalier family car.
Marlboro’s faith and investment was immediately rewarded when McNish and Hakkinen dominated the Formula Vauxhall Lotus season to finish first and second in the standings, with Hakkinen winning the Formula Opel Lotus Euroseries and McNish placing third.
A fresh-faced McNish sports his McLaren gear after joining the team’s F1 test line-up
A fierce battle with Brabham
British F3 would be the next step for both drivers, but while Hakkinen stayed with the Dragon Motorsport operation and struggled to make an impression, McNish thrived at West Surrey Racing to challenge Australia’s David Brabham – son of three-time F1 world champion Jack – for overall honours.
McNish initially claimed the title after a hard-fought campaign, with Brabham losing his second-place finish at a mid-season Silverstone round and being docked further points due to an apparent engine irregularity, only for that to be overturned and their positions reversed.
F1 ICONS: David Brabham on his father Jack, the legendary three-time world champion
“Brabs and I won around 70% of the F3 races between us in 1989, and it all ended up in court,” smiles McNish at the memory. “It was decided in a court battle over what the sleeve of an engine was. Was it the liner or was it a sleeve somewhere else? It’s one of these things where you look back at it and think, ‘Crikey, seriously?’.
“But David was a really, really thoughtful driver, and I learned a lot from him. I remember he overtook me around the outside of Copse in the British Grand Prix support race. Fast forward to 2008, we’re racing at Sebring in sportscars, and I went around the outside of him there. I thought, ‘That’s for bloody Silverstone!’ The funny thing is, when I saw him, he asked, ‘That was for Silverstone, wasn’t it?’ We both had the picture in our mind.”
Signing for McLaren
It was not the only memorable moment for McNish that weekend, with the youngster agreeing on a McLaren F1 testing contract “just before the race” – a deal that led to a busy few years hopping between Europe, where he would race in Formula 3000, and Japan, where Honda carried out day after day of testing at their Suzuka track.
McNish got to work with F1 stars Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger during his time at McLaren
“When I was doing all the testing with McLaren in Japan, I was out there three to four days every month, and what I didn’t appreciate at the time was how much it would take out of me,” says McNish, who made his F3000 debut in late-1989 – replacing F1-bound JJ Lehto – and committed to his first full campaign the following year.
“As an example, I came back from Japan to the second-last race of the 1990 season at Le Mans, and I was fighting with Erik Comas for the title. I landed in Paris, went straight to see my F3000 team boss Jean-Paul Driot at his apartment, headed to bed, and that was me out for like 14 hours – I was so exhausted.
“I had the opportunity to drive a McLaren, doing all the testing with it, developing the V12 and all of these other things, which was superb, but I probably needed to be better prepared to be able to conserve my energy for what was the actual number one job, which was trying to win the F3000 championship.
“We were there at Suzuka privately, myself and Christian Danner – he was driving the V8 Mugen, me the V12. Sometimes we had the active ride car as well, but generally it was all based around the V12. That was what you did, you just fronted up there every month, a few days of flat-out running, then you came home and went off to your next race or test.”
Experiencing Senna’s genius
While on one side testing for McLaren gave McNish some logistical and jet lag-related headaches, it was nonetheless a highly desirable opportunity to get to grips with F1 machinery and learn from two front-running talents in Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger.
While McNish played a part in McLaren’s F1 success, his testing duties did not lead to a race seat
Recalling his first test with McLaren at Estoril, McNish chuckles: “I thought, ‘S**t, this is fast’. Then we’re sitting there, and Ayrton starts talking about friction in the engine while accelerating out of the hairpin. I’m thinking, ‘Friction? You’re joking. This is mentally quick. It’s brilliant!’ But it was a dawn of realisation for me.
“It was probably the first time I understood that I couldn’t just drive on instinct and feel and speed – I had to try to piece other parts of it together. Ayrton was translating everything. We have to remember that this was pre-data, when your data was predominantly a stopwatch, nothing like today, so you had to come back and express your feelings methodically.
“You were literally downloading all of the data from a run. If that run was a 52-lap race run in Suzuka, you were downloading 52 laps. ‘On Lap 3, on Lap 7, on Lap 9, on Lap 10, this happened’. Your brain capacity was used in a different way, down into granular detail. I knew I had to work a lot harder to be a racing driver.”
F1 slips by – for now
McNish wound up fourth in the standings at the end of his rookie F3000 season, one that had started in tragic circumstances when he crashed heavily at the Donington Park opener and a spectator watching at the side of the track was killed by the debris.
A “really, really tough” moment to put behind him, McNish spent several more years trying to crack the feeder series, claiming a few podium finishes but not managing to post a better championship classification, leaving him concerned that the doors to a full-time F1 seat – despite also testing for Benetton – were now closed.
With his single-seater efforts fading, McNish got his career back on track in sportscars
“I thought, ‘Right, what am I going to do?’” McNish says. “I went out to Japan for a Formula Nippon test but there was a bizarre thing in the contract, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t sign that’. I went back home and Tom Kristensen got the opportunity instead. Funnily enough, I spoke to Tom afterwards and he said, ‘No, that’s not in the contract’, so they must have taken it back out. That was Tom’s break, long before we got together at Audi and formed such a strong relationship.
“Then, in IndyCar, there was a test with me and the likes of Lehto, Mark Blundell and Dominic Dobson. It was a very clear programme, everybody on used tyres, new tyres, high fuel, race runs… It’s no secret that I came out quickest in every dynamic, but they gave the seat to Mark, because Mark had a connection with McLaren, and it was a Mercedes engine in the car.
“There was a point there, if I’m very honest with you, where I thought, ‘What do I have to do?’ I had delivered what I could deliver, but it wasn’t enough due to other parameters, which is fine, because Mark had that connection and relationship, and he used that really, really well.
“It took me to Jost Capito, who was running the Porsche Supercup championship. He said, ‘Come and do a race’, so I did the 1996 British Grand Prix support event in the VIP car. Porsche then called me at the end of the year and said, ‘We’re looking to revamp our sportscar driver line-up, would you like to have a run?’ I did it and my career took off again.”
A ticket to F1 with Toyota
Take off it did, with McNish establishing himself as a key member of Porsche’s endurance line-up through 1997 and taking an emotional first victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1998 alongside Frenchman Laurent Aïello and Monegasque Stéphane Ortelli.
Toyota signed McNish to partner Finnish racer Mika Salo for their debut F1 season
McNish went on to contest the famous race with Toyota and Audi over the next couple of years – two brands that would, as it transpired, shape the remainder of his motorsport career.
In 2001, the closed door to F1 was nudged open again when newcomers Toyota – who knew what McNish could do from those aforementioned sportscars links – needed a dedicated development driver to help them prepare for their debut 2002 season.
McNish racked up thousands upon thousands of miles at circuits across Europe in an intensive testing programme and, at the end of it all, the Japanese manufacturer decided that he was the right person to slot alongside the already confirmed Mika Salo.
ANALYSIS: What’s behind Toyota’s return to Formula 1 with Haas – and how will it work?
Aged 32, and some seven years on from his last single-seater race, the moment had finally come.
“I basically stopped my programme with Audi to test for Toyota in 2001 and then race for them in 2002,” McNish comments. “You take the opportunity when you can. Very frankly, it was too late in my career – let’s be totally blunt. If it had been 10 years earlier, the momentum would have taken me forward.
“At the same time, Toyota underestimated massively what it took to compete in F1. They built a new team from zero and didn’t have too much experience. In fact, on my car, not one person had racing experience in F1. It was very much a learning as we went process by everybody. It’s not a detriment to the people, but the depth of experience wasn’t there.
You take the opportunity when you can. Very frankly, it was too late in my career – let’s be totally blunt. At the same time, Toyota underestimated massively what it took to compete in F1.
Allan McNish
“We also didn’t really have any updates that season. We had the car at the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year it was the same, apart from one small engine upgrade. That’s the reality of it. Then they decided to change both Mika and me for 2003. It’s their prerogative, every team’s got a prerogative, and they wanted to do that.
“Two weeks later, Renault boss Flavio Briatore, who I knew, was on the phone saying, ‘We’re going to run a third car in practice next year and I want you’. So, I did that, and my first test lap in the Renault in Barcelona, on a full tank of fuel, was quicker than my qualifying lap in the Toyota. It said something to me. It was a gulf compared to what I’d experienced the year before.”
Sepang and Suzuka mishaps
While McNish’s time in an F1 race seat was fleeting, there were a couple of standout moments to bookend that 2002 season – the first being a painful, missed opportunity to add to the breakthrough points scored by Salo in Australia at the next round in Malaysia.
“It was inexperience, to some extent, with the team,” McNish jumps back in. “Mika had a problem and came into the pit lane, but I was also coming in about 30 seconds behind him. I was sixth at the time and, because Mika had an issue, nearly lapping him. My new tyres went on his car and, when I arrived a few seconds later, it was like, ‘Christ, there’s another car!’ The mechanics took my tyres off and just put them back on again.
“I effectively did a double stint with my tyres, got done by Felipe Massa on the out-lap, and finished seventh. With that development cycle I mentioned, the next time we were realistically competitive was Austria, and we were running fifth at Monza when they had a problem with the suspension upright. It’s what could have been – ifs and buts!”
McNish was unable to make the points across the 16 races he started with Toyota
Then, at the final round of the season in Japan, McNish suffered one of the scariest moments of his racing career when he lost control of Toyota’s TF102 machine through the high-speed 130R corner during qualifying, darted off the track and slammed into the guardrails.
Peaking at a whopping 69g, the impact tore a hole in the metal barrier and littered debris in every direction, but McNish – despite blacking out – remarkably freed himself from the wrecked car without serious injury and took refuge on a grass bank.
READ MORE: 10 of the most remarkable injury comebacks in F1 history
“The shunt was obviously quite painful, predominantly because I was knocked out by it,” explains McNish, who missed the race on medical grounds given the significant forces involved. “I had a big bruise on my leg – it was black and blue from the base of my sole to the top of my hip. I also got a bit of a whack in the head.
“Basically, I kept my toe in it for that last run in quali, when you had four sets of new tyres, and I was seven-tenths up coming into 130R… It was nearly flat-out on the other laps, so I kept my toe in it. Unfortunately, the rear aero wasn’t quite capable of what I was asking it to do! That was it. Any shunt there is a big shunt. I remember everything until I was going backwards.
“When I was lying on the grass, I heard someone say, ‘Breathe’, which turned out to be a cameraman that I know really well. After that I walked through the hole in the barrier with Professor Sid Watkins, thinking, ‘That’s a stupid place to have a hole in the barrier, I’m going to have to speak with [Race Director] Charlie Whiting’. It was of course the hole I’d just put there!
Allan McNish 2002 Japan Quali crash
“It was only a few years ago that I realised the qualifying session had been delayed for like two hours. In my head it was five minutes, and I could hear the cars going out on track again, but I had no concept of the time. I was conscious, I was moving around, but I can’t remember it all.”
A trophy-filled sportscar return
After his year as Renault’s test driver, McNish returned to sportscars and picked up where he left off with Audi, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans two more times (with Kristensen alongside him), collecting three American Le Mans Series titles (including four 12 Hours of Sebring triumphs), and ultimately taking the coveted World Endurance Championship crown.
McNish announced his retirement at the end of 2013, fresh from that WEC success, and while it meant he would no longer represent Audi on the track, his ties with the organisation grew stronger and stronger – the veteran racer supporting various motorsport projects and later being offered a chance to run one of their teams.
“My relationship with Audi evolved in different areas,” says McNish, who survived another enormous shunt at Le Mans in 2011. “From being a little bit of a liaison between drivers and the engineering and design – because I knew them both, I knew their problems, and I could communicate it maybe in a slightly way – to being a Team Principal in Formula E.
“Something that I said I never wanted to do was run a team, because I didn’t want to have to deal with people like me – big-headed drivers! It was a very different situation, but I really enjoyed it. It gave me the spark and the thought that, ‘What we do really matters; we can make a difference here’. Obviously when we wound that programme down, the F1 programme started.”
A hat-trick of Le Mans victories rank at the top of McNish’s career achievements
Eyes back on F1 with Audi
Indeed, Audi are hard at work preparing for their full-scale F1 entry in 2026, when new regulations – which will feature power units with increased electrical power and the introduction of 100% sustainable fuels – come into play, having recently completed a full takeover of the Sauber operation.
With his “good and bad” experiences at Toyota in mind, albeit from a “very different era”, how big is the challenge Audi – now led by former Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto – are facing? And how much is he relishing the opportunity to be involved in the journey?
“It all needs to gel,” he says. “You can’t just throw people into a room and expect it all to work. You need to have a blend of youth and experience, energising people and analytical people, and you’ve got to find the right people for the right positions. At Toyota, as I said, I think they struggled a little to do that, because they started from zero on everything.
“You can always learn from every experience, and especially the next experience. If you can just pull in a bit of thought, it guides you in the direction that you should be going. It’s a tough challenge, there’s no tougher place than where we’re heading, but that’s what gets you up in the morning. If you don’t like competition, you shouldn’t be in this game...”
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