McNish: Audi's here to win 15 | 04 | 2016
Scotland's three-times Le Mans 24-Hours winner, and former World Endurance Champ, Allan McNish, gave Jim McGill an exclusive insight into the 2016 Audi sportscar campaign ahead of this weekend's WEC opener at Silverstone
AUDI HEADS INTO the opening round of the World Endurance Championship at Silverstone this weekend with an all-new R18 e-tron quattro. But though it's still at its early race-development stage, Scot Allan McNish has one objective: "We're here to win."
The three-times Le Mans 24-Hours winner, and former WEC champ, remains a pivotal cog in the super-efficient, well-olied Audi race machine.
Sitting in the warmth of the hospitality, sipping water and juggling two mobile phones, he explained why, despite having the all-new race car — which is now packed with a new energy-recovery system and has moved from the 4Megaloues class to 6Megajoules of recoverable electrical power — Audi can repeat last year's Silverstone win.
"The car is completely new," the 46-year-old from Dumfries, said. "In terms of aerodynamics, it's a completely new package.
"We've also changed from 4 to 6 Megajoules, which is not only a Class change, but it's also a structural change in the car because it's gone from a flywheel system to a battery system. That introduces a whole lot of learning processes, because up until now we've only ever worked with the flywheel technology.
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"It's a bigger change in relation to what you might expect, because there's the understanding of how you handle the batteries; the way of working with it; the way you handle the discharging in terms of managing the boost you've got available to you. How do you use it to the best advantage?
"But we're very early in the race-development process. On paper, when we come to Silverstone, it's not a circuit which is ideally suited to the Audi: yet it all worked very well 12 months ago.
"Ultimately it's all relevant to the competition. We know that Porsche was a bit quicker at the recent pre-season test at Paul Ricard: but they were a bit quicker at Ricard 12 months ago, and we beat them here.
"Personally, I feel we've made a big step forward, but we need to see where it puts us in a full, dry session. And from the weather forecast, we're not likely to have that till the race on Sunday. So really, we're all going to be stepping into the unknown when the race starts on Sunday at noon.
"Yet, our primary objective remains: we want to win. You don't build a new car not to win. The objective always remains, we only go racing to win.
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"There's the practical objective as well: at the moment, we've developed well, we've tested well. But we don't know exactly where we are in relation to the opposition, because we haven't actually seen what the opposition's got. And we're not going to find that out till qualifying tomorrow, and the race on Saturday.
"The good thing is, we've got a lot more potential in the car than we will be able to show because of that learning process."
And McNish highlights that the 2015 pain of Audi losing the season's Blue Riband event, the Le Mans 24-Hours, and the WEC — both to fellow VW Group car maker Porsche — propelled the Ingolstadt company to invest in the all-new R18.
"Everybody in every area of the team and the company has had to look at it and see what they can do better," McNish continued.
"We always knew there were areas and parts where we needed to step up and improve, and this is what you see now. The best reaction to what happened last year is the investment of time and effort, and we've got a completely new car out of it.
"This is the way it is in the championship now. Our car is still branded as an R18: but it's very, very different to the original R18. No one can afford to sit still. And we won't stop until we're back on the top step of the podium, both here and at Le Mans."
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Jim McGill