Allan Mcnish Debrief - How audi won the 2013 le mans 24 - /shakedown interview

[CAR ENGINE ROARING] LEO PARENTE: The 2013 Le Mans endurance race was a combination of amazing, boring, and heartbreaking, all over the course of a 24-hour period. It was the tragedy of Allan Simonsen. It was Aston Martin's failure to achieve a win in each of their GTE classes. There was a lot of holding station, and quite frankly, way too many safety car periods. But at the end, Audi proved their execution and won their 12th overall Le Mans 24. And Porsche showed tenacity with their new 911 by finishing one, two in the GTE Pro class with a very slick move in the last safety car, staying on slick tires and beating Aston Martin. It was all about team strategy versus driving. Even in the GTE Am class, pros like Patrick Long proved they are pros and put in some mega laps, maybe to remind Porsche that he's still a pro driver worthy of consideration. But at the end of it all, it was Audi that blunted the competition from Toyota to win. Now, we've done a lot of coverage of the 24 hours of Le Mans. And to put a cap to it, we're going to go back to Allan McNish with another Skype conversation, and he's going to dissect exactly how Audi got their victory. He got his third Le Mans 24, Tom Kristensen his ninth, Loic Duval his first. Back to Allan when we come back. [CAR ENGINE] LEO PARENTE: So we're back with Allan McNish. No, Allan, Leo Parente is not stalking you. ALLAN MCNISH: Feels like it. LEO PARENTE: But we'll get to that before we're done, but we thought definitely you were the guy to talk about doing a little bit of a debrief on how you, Audi, Tom Kristensen, accomplished your goals. 12 wins at Le Mans for Audi, nine for Tommy, your hat trick three. You got it done. Congratulations, obviously. Feelings of achievement-- tell me a little bit about that for yourself, for TK, and for Audi. ALLAN MCNISH: Yeah, but don't forget Loic Duval as well because he was a really integral part of this. I think we've got to rewind 12 months. Dindo Capello has been our longtime teammate with Paul and I. You know, Dindo retiring was quite a hit to our little group because he's irreplaceable in so many ways. But saying that, he wasn't replaced as such, because he certainly was there at Le Mans all weekend with us. But Loic Duval has stepped into Dindo's very big shoes. And [INAUDIBLE] right foot seems to be pretty heavy as well because it can certainly hit the gas pedal. And Loic was a very integral part of this victory. In a way, we came as basically equal leaders in the championship, and we knew that Le Mans was very important for Audi to try to get another title there. But also from the world championship point of view, it's very important for us as well to try and make sure we kept ahold of what we had already achieved in the first couple of rounds. But we never expected the threat that we had from Toyota to materialize in the way it did. They were significantly stronger in the race than they showed anywhere else. I thought they would be strong beforehand. I said that to you, Leo, in fact before it. But they were right the way to the end. And that was something that was a real thorn in our side because we couldn't let up. The conditions were dreadful all the way through. It would rain in one corner and not the next. There was torrential downpours that nobody could have predicted. And right to the last lap, Loic and I were in our little booth with our engineers and still on tenterhooks that Tom and the car was going to be able to bring it back safely. And so I have to say, for 24 hours, my heart was in my mouth, whether it was in the car or not. But a great victory, another fantastic one for Audi. And I have to say, for Loic, his first, for me, my third, and for Tommy, his ninth. You know, it's incredible. But we were very, very pleased on Sunday night. LEO PARENTE: Well, this why it's so easy for me to chat with you because you touched on every one of the subjects I want to take you through. But as we go through a debrief-- not that you need another race engineer. As we go through the debrief, we'll go through a little bit of that. But first of all, I want to start by acknowledging that you dedicated the race to Allan Simonsen, a very obviously tragic part of motor sport. It feels like there's always these situations where no matter what is done to prevent, something like that happens. And I understand the vibe at the track was very, very sincere in terms of their concerns. Anything that you sense has come out of that experience? I mean, you always hope that whatever improvement is made in safety is the proper legacy, but comment. ALLAN MCNISH: First of all, Allan Simonsen was a young Danish driver. So it definitely hit Tom quite hard because Denmark's like Scotland. It's a small place. It's got 5 million people. And from the Scottish racing community, you know, Leo, how close we are. And the Danish guys are exactly the same. And so we all kind of knew all the Danish drivers, even if you weren't from that country. So it hit us definitely probably more than what was normally expected. And Tom made a very, very fitting and very heartfelt speech on the podium to the Danish fans, and there's a lot at Le Mans as well, and also in the press conference, and dedicated the victory [INAUDIBLE] because he was a fantastic driver in his own right. He was in pole position for that race in the category. He was leading the category when the accident happened. And he was doing something that he loves to do. This is our passion. This is what we are sort of born to do, and we enjoy it immensely. And in many ways, if you have got the luxury and the good luck to find what is your passion and to make it into your job, you're luckier than so many people. But unfortunately for Allan, his career up to that date was going so well. But he had a big, big career ahead of him, and that's not going to be realized any longer. And so it was a bittersweet victory for us because it was sweet because of what we had achieved. But it was very sad in the loss that not only I would say Denmark or the driving community, but the motor sport in general has lost someone that was a very strong part of the paddock. You know, you always hear these things, you need to learn out of them. You need to try and assure that they are never to be happening again. And certainly not the same way. You can never reduce risk. There's no question about it. Motorsport is very, very safe. If you take it in terms of other sports, if you take it in terms of general real life, it's a very safe sport nowadays, but it can always be improved. Right now, a couple of days afterwards, it's far too early to make any strong judgments or statements about it. You know, you need to know and understand the total [INAUDIBLE]. And then make very considered and correct judgments from there. But I can assure you, having been through quite a big accident at Le Mans in 2011, and also with Rocky, my teammate as well, it is taken very seriously by the ACO and the FIA and also the teams as well, the manufacturers. And so I'm very sure that this will be looked into thoroughly to try to make sure as much as physically possible that these type of situations and this type of loss won't happen if it can be avoided. But we all know that there is an element of risk in racing. And that is also in a way which makes that edge very special as a driver when you're on a big circuit like Le Mans and when you're pushing the limits. But sometimes, unfortunately and very sadly in this situation, that a driver lost his life. LEO PARENTE: And I trust that the friends and family of Allan Simonsen understood and felt the passion that comes from his fellow racers and the appropriate feeling. You had the job to do. It was at the beginning of the race, so head down, and you went to go. I guess I'm just curious, when did you feel that the Audi strategy was going to work? ALLAN MCNISH: Well, in our car, we led from hour six, so it was 19 hours. And if I was totally honest with you, until the last big heavy rain shower, which was probably an hour and 15 minutes from the end, we knew we were in reasonable control because we had speed over the Toyotas, but we were never comfortable. And so our strategy was very good, but it wasn't to the point where we were in total control until that last rain shower. And at that point, that put us into a very good strategic position with a number of fuel stops at the end of the race. And it meant that we had a lap lead, but we had a comfortable lap. Up until that point, if it hadn't have rained, we had only one minute and 30 seconds lead over the Toyota because it had to do one less stop than us because of its fuel tank capacity being 76 liters in comparison to our 58 liters with the Audi. And so from that point of view, it was a very tricky calculation because anything-- a puncture, for example-- could have meant that we were not going to win the race. And so we had an advantage which looked clear and it looked comfortable, but in reality, if anything had happened, then we were going to be fighting for second or third place. LEO PARENTE: So one more question before we go through the debrief quarter by quarter, six hours by six hours. You mentioned it, and it was something I wanted to talk. Did conditions play to your favor, or was it just another thing to beat back? ALLAN MCNISH: You know, I've mulled this over a little bit since the end of the race You might know, we've got Quattro. And when you've got limited traction, especially out of the chicanes, out of Dunlop chicane -- Mulsanne, Arnage-- these ones that lead onto big straights. You know, the more power you can put onto the ground, whether it be energy from the engine or hybrid power from through the front, the e-tron Quarto aspect, the better. And I would have said that in some ways it played into our advantage. But on the other side of it, with all the safety cars, there was quite a few occasions where we lost one third of a lap just purely and simply because of the safety car coming out at the wrong point. But you can never strategize these sort of things. You can never work them out. The safety car comes out when it comes out, and it comes out for a very good reason. So therefore, you've just got to accept it. Sometimes it works with you. Sometimes it works against. Over the course of a year, I would say it probably equals itself out. It's a bit like in soccer, the referee's decision, or American football, whatever it may be. But right now, I would have said that it was probably an equalizing factor as opposed to anything else. I think if it had been dry, we maybe would have had a bit more speed potential over the Toyotas because of the fact that they would have run clean for the longer period of the race. LEO PARENTE: And hold that thought on speed. It comes up in my mind when you were getting into that final quarter, that last part of the race. But let's start with the first six hours. When we interviewed before the race, you had mentioned that no one wins in the first lap, but everyone's going to make a statement. Oh my god. Toyota made a statement with speed. What was going on? What did you guys feel right then? ALLAN MCNISH: Five minutes before the start of the race, I was in the car, strapped in. And then they gave me a rain warning to say it was going to be a very light rain over the course of the circuit. And the problem with a closed cockpit car is you can't see very much, how heavy the rain actually is. Because just the way that the glass around the front is and also the side visions and things like that, it reduces your capacity to sort of feel what it's like as if it would be in an open cockpit car. And therefore, going into the first corner, I didn't know whether from the four minutes that I'd been there before, whether it was heavy rain, light rain, or whatever. So your breaking point could easily have been 300 yards, but it could easily have been 200 or 100. However, if you braked a 100 as 200 and it was wet, then 300 was the right one. You were going to crash. And so I was fully risk averse for the first stint. For the first period in the car, I thought about it this way and this way only. Look, if he gets away 40 seconds, whatever it may be, he gets away. However, we're in it to win it at the end, not at the beginning. If it had been dry, I would have attacked. I for sure would have led into the first corner and gone from the front. But with those conditions of not knowing what the next corner of the next lap was going to be like, your thing of just making sure you got through the first six hours and then see where you were from there on. On our car, we were certainly playing-- I would've said we were not in the gambling mood so much. We were all trying to make sure that we were just in the safe position all the way through until the time was right to try to release the speed out of the car a little bit more. LEO PARENTE: And I'm smiling as you say that because there's conservatism and then there's McNish conservatism. If my notes are right, let's recap on the first six hours. I saw you coming out of the Dunlop Bridge being very aggressive with that first corner. You seemed to have something there. And by the end of the six hours, if I'm right, car number two caught car number one, and you had the lead at hour six. ALLAN MCNISH: Yeah, you know, if I go back to my first win in 1998, we weren't very quick relative to some of the other guys, and Mercedes especially, and the Toyotas were very fast. But the Porsche was a little bit off the pace, but by hour six, we were leading the race. By 9 o'clock at night, 10 o'clock, somewhere about there, we were leading the race. And there was an element of that that there's a lot of speed at the beginning. People have got a lot of energy, and they want to push the things. But you've got to try and play that long game. And also a little bit, Leo, to be honest with you, the incidents of last year sort of did play, not in my mind, but I was very aware of the fact that it is won at the checkered flag at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Those first laps especially were very, very difficult, and I was quite keen to make sure we are controlled, and probably 90% as opposed to even 95%. And I have to be honest. My usual pace is 100%, no questions, whatever the conditions are. But this particular case, I pulled it back quite a lot. And Loic and Tom as well, we were, just keep it all calm, nice and tidy, keep it all together. And as it turned out, by hour six, we were back into the lead. We knew we had raw pace underneath us, and we didn't necessarily need to take big risks to achieve it. But we just knew we had to stay in the game. But like I say, it started to turn to us at that point. And then from then on in, it was a different type of calculated risk. The next six hours after that were trying to just make sure we built enough of a gap so that if things did happen-- safety cars, punctures, that sort of thing-- then we were still able to control it. LEO PARENTE: And I'm going to play off your words. It truly was a team effort because you established the team first. Now, TK stepped in in the second six hours and got himself in a good position, a lead position. It was a little back and forth, safety car. And then he really took control of the race by hour 10. I know you had more stints in there, but literally, he got you to that 10, 11 hour, 12 mark where it was your race from the standpoint of we knew where we were going into that first half, yes? ALLAN MCNISH: Yeah. Yeah, I've got to say, by that point, we knew where we were. By hour four, we kind of knew where we were relative to them. We knew their fuel strategy. We knew their speed on certain tires. We knew their speed on damp, on wet, on dry. And certainly, by the time that a dryish circuit came around for a short period, then Tom was able to step on it, able to get a controlling gap over the car number eight, which was a Toyota. And from that point, we were trying to then control it going forward. But it's a very difficult thing because you've got to try and-- and this race was the hardest for me. I have to say to you, it was definitely the hardest conditions I've ever had over a 24-hour period, because constantly for 24 hours, you were right on edge. You never had-- in fact, I had a total of nine laps in the whole race that were under one constant weather condition. And then on the 10th lap, it rained like mad. And I was coming into the Porsche cars, which are normally 170 miles an hour. You're doing about 80 miles an hour, just sliding around, thinking crikey, am I going to make it out of the corner. So you had to take the advantage when you can. And when it was dry, and Tom was able to do that, by God, he did it, and he did it very well. LEO PARENTE: And to your point, when we got to the third six-hour stint, this is where Loic Duval showed himself. There were situations where you had the lap advantage, but I think it kind of unwound. And he consolidated and got that lap back. I mean, everyone was doing their job. Were you waiting for Toyota to surprise you? Or is this the point where we kind of knew, all right, they've shown their hand. We've shown our hand. ALLAN MCNISH: We knew that they had shown the speed they had. In the middle of the night, I got in the car, and I was in for nearly 3 and 1/2, 3 hours 40 minutes. But I got a point where I was able to push and increase the lead on the Toyota. And then suddenly the safety car came out, and it was a big long safety car. And then Loic jumped in about 4:40 in the morning, I think it was. And he had a good clean run, and he really-- he put the welly down then. He got his foot down, and he increased that gap. And we were up to nearly two laps over the Toyota, and then a safety car came out. And because of the fact you've got three safety cars around the lap of Le Mans, if you come out as one comes out, then there's very potential that the other car just is able to follow onto the back of you. And so we lost a third of a lap on two separate occasions to the Toyota, and then we had to rebuild that lap. And that was one of the difficult points through the course of the night and leading into the morning of the fact that you had built the gap, and then suddenly, it all went away from you. Nothing you could control, but that's the way it was. LEO PARENTE: So three quick questions to all that. Number one, don't laugh. On the safety car periods, how do you maintain concentration? Or is that a real effort to-- yeah, OK, number two. How much did you bust Loic's balls to make sure that he didn't screw it up for you and TK? ALLAN MCNISH: No, no, no, no. Let's go back to the first question. When you're behind the safety car, and it's wet, and you don't know why it's satisfying, you just drive around. And it's 100 kilometers an hour, 60 miles an hour, it's like so slow. But if you're on slicks, and it's raining, and you have to try and keep some temperature into those tires, you have to weave. And you have to load the tire, brake, accelerate, that sort of thing. But if you're on slicks in the wet, and you try and do that, the chances of you making a mistake and going off behind the safety car is very, very, very high. And so therefore, that was a really delicate balance. So if you're in the wet, then it was OK. You just drove around. And if it was on the other side, and you actually went into the safety car period on slicks, and it was raining, I tell you, that wasn't a lot of fun. LEO PARENTE: And Porsche won their GTE Pro class by doing that, if I recall. ALLAN MCNISH: It's a risk. It's a strategy risk, and you play that game sometimes. And we were in a position where we played it a few times, but we also played the safe card on other occasions because we were in the lead, and so we were in a position to do that. But it was important to get that lead. Going to Loic, didn't need to bust his balls on anything. That boy's good. I'll tell you what, he's the start of the future. Without any question in my mind, he is the start of the future. He's got the speed. He's got the mental capacity. He loves Le Mans without question. You can see that in his fluidity and driving style. And I had no, absolutely no thoughts at all, not even a single thought, that anything could go wrong when he was at the wheel. There was absolutely no question in my mind at all. LEO PARENTE: In the fourth quarter, the last part of the race, it clearly was evident that Toyota was trying to push, and here came the mistakes. I'm first curious, there was a lot of disparity of lap time. It looks like when Lotterer was catching up, be turned in at like [? 3:22's, ?] and the car's really quick. But even with conditions being different, it seemed like you guys were running to some type of pace managing. And even then, Toyota was 2 to 3 seconds behind you. You can tell me I'm wrong. Was I reading that, or was there a management factor going on here now? ALLAN MCNISH: There's definitely a management factor from our car point of view. I think the Toyota was trying to push us into any sort of mistake, because if I was in that car, that's what we would try and do. Certainly, car number one, after its problem early on, had nothing to lose. It was just going as fast as possible. If it finished fifth or six or not at all, for Le Mans, it didn't really make much difference. But they needed to get as high up as possible for their world championship campaign. And so any positions there are covered, which needed to be through sheer speed, then they were going to take it. And so, therefore, they could throw caution to the wind. If we threw caution to the wind, we were throwing potentially a first place away. And that side of things, we were very much on the, I would say risk assessment, risk control, and risk averse. We came in, and there was a time when you could have maybe gone onto intermediate tires. But we went to the wets because that was the safest option at that point. If you were rolling the dice, and you're in Vegas, you'd have probably gone to the inters or even maybe the slicks. But we didn't need to do that, so we played all of those cards very much on the conservative side of things because we'd already done the legwork to get into that place. LEO PARENTE: Tell me a little bit, if you can, what was the deal with the Michelin intermediate slick? How does that work? ALLAN MCNISH: Very well. I don't know what you want me to say. If you look at it, and you look outside and it's raining and it's a bit wet and you stick this what effectively looks like a slick tire on, then you're kind of a bit, oh my goodness. But when you get out in the circuit, the grip's there. And so I don't know how they've developed their style or what they've done to achieve it, but it works. That's all I can say. I think it's one of those ones, Leo, that if I rewind a few years, remember when we first came to Sebring in 2006 with a diesel, and pretty much everybody thought that we were nuts coming with a diesel to an international motor race, and there's no way diesel can be fast and efficient and clean and all that sort of thing, and it was. Well, I think that's one of these things that it just changes the total mindset of what the norm used to be and what it actually is now. Because I've never thought of an intermediate tire being in that particular tread pattern. I've always thought that it treads to evacuate water in some sort of way, but apparently not now, and I have just moved on LEO PARENTE: And I have to apologize for absolutely the world's freaking worst question, so I'm sorry about that. ALLAN MCNISH: Now? LEO PARENTE: Now. ALLAN MCNISH: Or previously? Because there's been a few that have been good in your time you've asked. LEO PARENTE: I'm probably 1 for 28. So what would you say the R18 did best at Le Mans to make the win happen for you? ALLAN MCNISH: There's not a single answer to that. And it might sound a bit of a cop out, but it's not really. Because the R18 was fantastically reliable. We had a minimal problem with one car, and we had two cars run to the end, finishing first and third. And so reliability was definitely a key. However, another big factor was its adaptability to the varying conditions that we had, whether it be heavy rain, whether it be intermediate conditions, greasy on a wet circuit with slick tires, or on a drying circuit with wet tires, or whether it be pure dry, that adaptability was very important. And I think that another factor was the sheer speed of the car. Because we had pure speed. Now, the last time [INAUDIBLE]. And in that race, we played a perfect card all the way through. But we didn't have the speed of Porsches. We were chasing, not being chased. But this time, we had the speed advantage over the Toyota. And so you really need all of these things. You can't just say one thing about it. But what I can say is the engineers at Audi sport over the winter did a fantastic job on a lot of details that made the car very good on track. But they did a heck of a lot of work with the details that you would never, ever see. A lot of the little details that us drivers would feel and appreciate, but when you're watching the car going around on television or even live at the track, you wouldn't necessarily notice what we were utilizing to get all of the performance out of it, whether it be performance driving around the circuit or performance even in the pit lane in the servicing and the pit stops. LEO PARENTE: And as fantastic as Le Mans is, and congratulations again, you schooled me on this. The job's not done. There's a world endurance championship to win. You've got one more, the equivalent of one more 24-hour race, plus another race, so there's five to go. We're going to see you at the Koto race. ALLAN MCNISH: Yeah, I know. LEO PARENTE: Well, and I told you upfront, I'm not stalking you. I think I'm going to see you, except I got a letter in the mail from Audi PR. And I thought it was an invitation. And it's a restraining order. So listen, you have a good race, and I'll see you from maybe 500 yards away, OK? ALLAN MCNISH: It 's a mile, by the way. It wasn't 500 yards. I stipulated a mile, Leo. LEO PARENTE: Great job. Thank you for sharing everything with us all the time. Congratulations. ALLAN MCNISH: Pleasure. Thank you very much, and I look forward to seeing you in Koto. And you can come up. You can have a cup of tea with us. Don't worry. LEO PARENTE: I'll wear a mustache. Ciao, ciao. Thank you. ALLAN MCNISH: Bye. LEO PARENTE: Bye. [RACING SOUNDS] [MUSIC PLAYING]