McNish Meets The Audi R8 LMS At Silverstone

Le Mans ace puts GT3 car through its paces for Autosport 6hrs preview

Witnessing a bit of ace wheelmanship from the passenger seat is a rare privilege, so we jumped at the chance to jump into an Audi R8 at Silverstone yesterday. The R8 was an LMS (Audi's GT3-spec 'customer' racing car), and the ace wheelman none other than two-times Le Mans winner Allan McNish.

With 'only' 500 or so horsepower to play with on the wide-open spaces of Silverstone, it's not the outright acceleration that gets you. But 'lawks', those big Michelins don't half hang on through the corners.

Don't get me wrong, the view from the passenger seat positively flies by when Nishy's leaning on the power, but it's the lack of much discernible slowing down for some of the corners that really makes your eyes wobble. Don't go for a taxi ride with a hangover, is my advice, or you'll risk the £50 clean-up fee...

Yesterday's media event was staged to promote the upcoming Autosport Six Hours of Silverstone, at which you won't see the R8 LMS competing because the race is for Le Mans cars. That means McNish will be lining up his R18 TDI for team Audi to do battle with the Peugeot, Aston Martin, Lola and Zytek LMP1 cars (to name a few), plus the Porsches, Ferraris, Lotuses et al in the lower classes.

So why was the R8 there yesterday? Well they can't do passenger rides in the R18 and this particular car is the latest addition to Audi UK's PR fleet. So look out for eager hacks driving it in your favourite magazine soon (they may even let PH have a go...), but maybe not just yet as it's fresh out of the packing crate from Germany.

Surprisingly perhaps, yesterday was the first chance McNish has had to drive the GT3 racer. So was he impressed? Yes (less surprisingly, perhaps...), and although it was always going to be hard drawing comparisons between a 4x4 road car and a rear-drive racer with a six-speed sequential box on racing slicks we gamely offered Nishy the opportunity to earn his PR fee:

"Where you can really feel the lineage from the road car is the weight distribution," he told us. "It's very good for a road car with a V10 engine in the back, and this is transferred across to the race car. It's really easy to set it up balanced in a corner and hold it there."

"It's also a really flat, stable platform - which I'm used to from my LMP1 car - you don't feel the car pitching or rolling when changing direction. There's also lots of front end grip and the car turns in really quickly - which is something I'm not so used to on my own racer, so I'll be taking that back to the team in Ingolstadt..."

As for the race, the typically chipper Scot is upbeat about the team's chances: "Our car should suit the circuit well, and I like the new track layout apart from the 35mph hairpins which are tricky.

"As my 'home' race, the pressure's on to do well, especially as there'll be so many friends and old faces turning up."

If you want to join them, you can see McNish racing his R18 at Silverstone on the weekend of Sept 9-11. Tickets are available from a measly £12 at www.silverstone.co.uk.