McNish on being voted into Hall of Fame: ‘I’m so proud to be recognised’

Before he knew it, the man from Dumfries was in the Stuttgart hot-seat driving the fearsome 911 GT1 at Le Mans ‘97 – not that he was totally comfortable with the experience first time round.

“Terrifying – absolutely and utterly terrifying,” he says of his initial La Sarthe laps. “I had driven Formula 1 cars, probably 150 days worth in between McLaren and Benetton, so I knew what speed was.

“But I remember it as if it was yesterday, going down to that first chicane – it was like being in Star Trek and going into Warp Factor 3. Back then there were a lot of tram lines in the middle of the road, where the trucks had been going every day. It wasn’t as if it was resurfaced every year.

“The car was sort of dancing around in these tram lines, it didn’t have huge downforce.

“When I got a telephone call from Porsche it was like someone said, ‘We believe in you.'”

“I braked towards the end of the straight, downshifted and then had to accelerate and upshift again, because I’d braked so early for the corner! Your first laps were like 15/20 seconds off the pace. It’s easier these days!”

That ’97 Le Mans attempt ended in a DNF, but one year later he was a La Sarthe winner, the Porsche pulling through where the might of Mercedes, BMW and Toyota couldn’t. McNish relished the moment, and said he felt totally rejuvenated by sports cars.

“When I first got a telephone call from Porsche motorsport boss Herbert Ampferer, it was like someone said, “Yeah, we believe in you.”

“It’s difficult to estimate what value that has, and also what lap-time value that has, but without question, they had confidence in me.

“When I was standing on the podium at Le Mans ‘98, it was a Laurent Aïello, Stéphane Ortelli, and myself – three complete rookies. Not the fancied runners but generally, I think, the quickest ones who delivered in terms of getting the car to the end and winning. But I had no idea how it would change my career in the way that it did.

“Suddenly it brought me back to people’s attention, including in F1. It just showed the power of Le Mans, one of the biggest sporting events in the world.”

After Porsche pulled out, McNish moved over to Toyota before the Japanese giant quit sports cars too, but the links he had made with the latter swept him along into its burgeoning grand prix squad.

Though that partnership ultimately ended after a single 2002 season, McNish says the experience made him an even better sports car driver.

“At eight in the morning, the right rear wheel came off for Dindo coming into Indianapolis with six hours to go. “I thought, What do I have to do to win another one? What on earth?’

“But that actually created a resolve and I think it was one of the things that actually delivered the ‘08 victory. We knew we had to dig deep particularly as Peugeot had stepped up the game significantly.

“We had to come in on the first safety car because we were so on the limit with fuel. We were stretching everything from first second to the last second of that race. That was definitely a key one, because that was about the human performance as much as the car performance.”

McNish would sign off his racing career in style in 2013 by taking the World Endurance Championship, helped along that year by a third Le Mans victory.

As well as an Audi Le Mans victory being picked out by McNish, it no surprise he also plumps for an Ingolstadt machine when asked to choose his favourite competition car.

“Easy, the Audi R10!” he exclaims. “That car changed so many things. It was a car that was a bit of a brute to drive, in that it had so much power and torque that if you did not control it, it controlled you.

“You had to pick it up and throw it around to get the best out of it, but when you did, God, it gave you so much back.

“It was also a pretty ruthless time of racing because we were racing against the might of Peugeot at their peak, but I loved that car and I just enjoyed the whole challenge of it – never mind the fact that it brought us a Le Mans win, two ALMS titles, a couple of Sebrings and three back to back Petit Le Mans.”

Appraising his career, the “ruthless” yet affable Scot is only grateful for what sports cars has given him, and also evidently humbled by the Motor Sport award.

“I never, ever thought motor sport was going to be a career for me,” he says. “We are basically farmers, as a region, where I’m from.

“For a wee boy from the southwest of Scotland, when I first heard about the Ecurie Ecosse team for the first time, there’s no way I would ever have believed that I would be recognised into the Motor Sport ‘Hall of Fame.’”