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American LeMans
PRUETT: The Lion King
After another Allan McNish masterpiece at the expense of ‘The Lion,’ Peugeot learned that to beat Audi, they must first deal with the Scot’s carnivorous approach to racing.
Marshall Pruett  |  Posted October 13, 2008   Oakland, CA
Allan McNish keeps an eye on the progress of his teammates as they claw back the two laps lost to Peugeot. The Scot would own the day as he willed his car and team to overcome an insurmountable deficit to win. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)


I got home late Sunday night after Petit Le Mans and spent the first few days of the week watching and re-watching Allan McNish’s mercurial drive--from impossibility--to one of the most stunning comebacks I can remember. With an additional ten hours of Audi in-car video to watch, its taken me a week to work through all of the footage to fully appreciate the enormity of what McNish achieved. For the 113,000 fans that lined the Road Atlanta circuit, Allan’s drive will provide them with decades of ‘Let me tell you about the day I saw McNish come from two laps down and beat Peugeot at Petit Le Mans…’ stories to tell. Whether you witnessed Allan’s drive in person or watched it on TV, there was an overriding sentiment that we’d seen a great, historical event unfold in front of us.

McNish had the done same thing earlier this year at Le Mans. But the brilliance of the Petit Le Mans drive, one of the greatest of my generation, was delivered in the early morning under changing conditions, and criminally, performed without live TV cameras beaming his genius into American living rooms for all to see.

The 2008 edition of the 10 hour/1000 mile race will be remembered as a drive of redemption for Allan; what so many missed last June in France was on full display last Saturday night in Braselton, GA.

Allan’s teammate, Tom Kristensen, is likely to hold the crown for Le Mans 24 Hour victories for decades to come. But McNish must surely hold the informal title of ‘Greatest active sportscar driver’ until someone comes along who’s capable of defeating the most determined prototype pilot on the planet. Winning big races will bolster any resume, but how those races are won make all the difference in how a driver’s career is remembered.
In his Audi R10 TDI, McNish carried out a race-long assault on every corner and every opponent in his path. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)

Three ALMS driver’s championships and two Le Mans victories dot Allan’s own history books, but if we’re honest, the measure of McNish’s talents can’t be defined or quantified by the amount of hardware resting in his trophy case.

I’ve always been of the mind that a driver’s efforts are equally as important as his record, but if pressed, I’ll gravitate towards a Gilles Villeneuve or Jean Alesi – men lacking championships and impressive winning percentages at the top level, but who are regarded as two of the most mesmerizing drivers ever to wield a racing car.

McNish is cut from the same cloth as those icons – daring, aggressive, and possessed behind the wheel of a racing car. His sportscar racing championships and Le Mans victories aside, the purity of Allan’s approach to his craft has put him on a plane that no one seems capable of reaching today.

To simply watch Allan at work in his Audi, as one colleague said this week, is an incredible honor, and like Gilles and Jean, you're always prepared for the impossible to be made possible. McNish is warm and engaging out of the car, but one would have no idea that the humble, self-deprecating man sipping tea in Audi’s hospitality tent is capable of spreading such terror when he dons his helmet.

In comic book terms, the cockpit of Allan’s Audi R10 TDI is his telephone booth; but for the addition of a cape to his firesuit, the visible transformation of the Scot from wee Allan into sportscar racing’s Superman strikes fear in his opponents like no other prototype pilot on earth. His dogged, relentless, and unwavering attack on Peugeot’s dreams of a Le Mans victory this year bordered on cruelty. It wasn’t hard to picture the French team’s managers and drivers hoping for anyone BUT Allan to climb into his Audi booth and save the day for Ingolstadt.

Three and a half months later in Georgia, there was a certain inevitability that McNish would continue to ruin Peugeot’s season, wasn’t there? ‘The Lion’ posted laps in testing more than two seconds clear of Allan’s best, but there wasn’t a hint of concern under the Audi Sport North America tent. They’d seen that movie before and also knew they could affect the ending just as they’d done at La Sarthe in June.
Peugeot led for nine of ten hours at Petit Le Mans. Care to guess who led the tenth hour? (Photo: Marshall Pruett)

McNish’s #1 R10 kept pace with Peugeot in practice with his regular teammate Dindo Capello serving as his capable wingman and Audi veteran Emanuele Pirro demonstrating a revitalized turn of speed. Qualifying would see McNish do the improbable; on a full race setup, Allan set the pole in his first clear tour. Peugeot’s Stephane Sarrazin would hammer away lap after lap trying to better McNish’s time, only doing so by a tenth of a second just before the session ended.

What took Sarrazin sixteen laps only required four from Allan. For a team fielding the most incredible P1 car on the planet, no one expected the French to struggle to match the ageing Audi for pace. Dramatic in-car footage would show the 908 with a significant power advantage – gaining as much as 300 feet on the R10 on the straights, and for that, Audi had no answer.

Allan’s accident on his recce lap was possibly the first time Peugeot exhaled after qualifying. Like Le Mans, McNish had made the extraordinary 908 HDI FAP look anything but special in the prototype qualifying lap battles, but Allan’s gaffe – one that looked terminal, tipped the balance back in The Lion’s favor. After embarrassments at Le Mans and in the LMS, would Peugeot finally have a chance to redeem themselves in a big race against their arch rivals?

Well, no, you see, Allan had a bit of redemption to seek for himself. McNish turned Saturday’s Petit Le Mans into his own personal ‘drive of redemption’ and for Peugeot, ten hours of impending demoralization would ensue.

Starting two laps behind the field after repairs took slightly longer than expected (details on that effort below), McNish called upon all of his nearly immeasurable talents to set out on a Peugeot 908 hunting expedition. This wasn’t going to be a case of finding a tree-top perch and waiting for his prey to meander into his rifle sight. Allan had a full day of sprinting, ducking and dodging ahead of him before pouncing on his target and clamping down on its throat.

Keeping up with the 908 under acceleration was impossible, but McNish could keep up with Peugeot’s dragster by driving every lap at maximum attack – by scything his R10 through traffic and refusing to relent his pursuit for even a single corner. What Peugeot brings for pace, Allan McNish brings in the form of nasty, rude, confidence shattering pressure.

SPEED’s cameras peered into Peugeot’s pits in the latter half of the race and returned images of a team that had no answer to stem the suffocating nature of Allan’s attack. If they have a version of Dr. Phil in France – Dr. Phillipe, possibly…I’d recommend for him to pay a visit to the team this winter. They could certainly use his help. I swear I saw a few nervous ticks and twitches from the team's senior brass.

The popular terms used to describe a racing driver are many – fast, committed, technical, motivated…but thanks to McNish, we can now add ‘carnivorous’ to the motorsports lexicon. Ask the pilots of trio of 908’s at Le Mans what ran through their minds when they saw McNish’s tartan-liveried helmet in their mirrors. Even better, ask the entire Petit Le Mans field what it was like to see the #1 Audi looming in their mirrors as it sliced through a packed field to take back the precious minutes lost at the beginning of the race.

McNish was a man on a mission – he spent each of his extended stints with little concern for the particular lap he was on; his focus centered on pushing until he passed the Peugeot. What happened in the hours before that were a blur.
Arm raised in victory, McNish would spend the next five minutes pumping his fist and reveling in the accomplishment of the Audi team. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)

Ask Christian Klein what it was like to receive radio transmissions from his team about the ever shrinking lead he held over McNish in the final hour of the race. “6.8 seconds to McNish…4.9 to McNish…3.1 to McNish…1.2 to McNish…OK,…just try to keep him in your sights, Christian…”

Poor guy. At least he wasn’t surprised when Allan nipped past and pulled out a commanding lead.

Peugeot raced at Petit to gain further endurance racing expertise – to take yet another test in the hopes of sharpening the minds of their strategists on pit lane. I’m positive they flew home after the race to Velizy with a number of lessons learned – of new ways to fight Audi at Le Mans in 2009. But they can’t ‘out will’ Allan McNish. They’ve beaten Audi in the LMS, but when the stakes are high, Peugeot can’t seem to beat McNish in a straight fight.

Their drivers don’t want to win as badly as he does. Their management and engineers can’t comprehend the depths of Allan’s drive and utter refusal to be beaten. Don’t get me wrong, everyone within Peugeot desires to win, but McNish possesses the rare ability to turn his own desires into action and results in a manner The Lion can’t comprehend. All he needs is a drop of blood in the water and the Scot is locked in on his target until they’ve been sighted, tracked, and conquered.

As we saw on the recce lap, the only person capable of beating Allan McNish is Allan McNish. He may drive like Superman and may be impervious to Peugeot’s assaults, but ultimately, he’s just a man. He’s mortal, but if you asked anyone under The Lion’s tent, they might not be as convinced. McNish has spent most of his life taking on bigger opponents – both in stature or resources, and Peugeot is just the latest to feel the white hot intensity from sportscar racing’s brightest star.

2008 will be looked back as the year of Allan McNish in sportscar racing. For as much as he owned the prototype category, Peugeot scampered home this week with its tail between its legs. They built the fastest sportscar in the world, yet learned yet again that speed isn’t enough to overcome the will of a driver that refuses to be beaten. McNish owns Peugeot right now – their minds, their spirits and their ability to capture a win that matters.

Call him ‘Superman’ if you want, but until Peugeot figures out how to beat him, I prefer ‘The Lion King. ’

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Marshall Pruett

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