Allan McNish looks for new Audi to show its star quality

ALLAN McNish does not profess to be Steve McQueen, but he believes Audi are putting Hollywood cool back into Le Mans this year.

For the first time since Audi began competing in the 24-hour event in 1999, the German manufacturing giant's three-car assault on the cherished race will see them use closed-cockpit vehicles.

Bitter rivals Peugeot have done so for the last few years but, on the 40th anniversary of the movie Le Mans made famous by McQueen, it is fitting the most successful marque of the modern era should grace the 13.629-kilometre stage with its latest model.

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Ahead of the iconic race that starts at 2pm UK time tomorrow, two-time winner McNish said: "Visually, I've always liked the closed cars. That probably harks back to the Steve McQueen film era when I thought they looked sexy.

"You have to go by the stopwatch, of course but, for me, I do go for the closed cars, just purely based on aesthetics.

"I think they look like Le Mans cars, as in the Steve McQueen movie when they should be a total prototype, something from a different age. They don't look like anything else out on track. They don't look like a Formula 1 car or a touring car. They look like something from the space age, like a space rocket. It's a pure performance vehicle."

Remarkably for the 41-year-old McNish, this year marks the Scot's 30th season in motorsport, harking back to his days in karting, and he feels the slogan from the Le Mans movie "Racing is life: anything that happens before or after is just waiting", could not be more apt in his case.

"I'm sure that was a line made up in a bar which then made its way into the movie," added the Scot. "For me it will be 30 years in September since I started karting and, for the last 30 years, my life has always been about racing. For the first few years of my life I probably was waiting to find out what I wanted to do, what I was good at, playing around at things. So maybe it is a true reflection of Allan McNish in a way."

The drive and passion remain in force, and the stopwatch has not started telling McNish the time to quit is at hand.

The desire to claim his Le Mans hat-trick is as strong now as it was when he first competed back in 1997, with his initial victory 13 years ago in a Porsche. "I think our car is quick. We've made a big improvement in terms of the pure speed of the car, and we've a driveable car, something we struggled with last year," said McNish."Last year the car was quick on occasion, but it wasn't consistent, and the aerodynamics now are much more stable, and with the closed cockpit we've also efficiency, which is a big step forward.

"I would say we've the right capability to win, but I'm not naive enough - having won a couple, but also having lost a few when we've been leading - to say we're going to win. However, we have the right car and team to be able to do it." The quality of the opposition, however, is strong, not least the two sister Audis, along with the trio of Peugeots, one of which has fellow Briton Anthony Davidson at the wheel.

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"This race is set to be the closest for years," assessed McNish, whose co-drivers will again be Dindo Capello and Tom Kristensen, the latter the event record holder with eight wins in 14 starts at Circuit de la Sarthe.

"If you think of the races over the last few years, and not just Le Mans, there has been this nip-and-tuck aspect between us and Peugeot. It seems that on paper we have an extremely fast and aggressive race coming up but, for me, that's the perfect situation because it will make it sweeter if we do have success."

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