Next Up on DSC’s Best Car, Worst Car, Dream Car challenge is three-times Le Mans 24 Hours winner, 2013 FIA WEC Drivers World Champion, three-time American Le Mans Series Champion, current Audi Formula E Team Principal, FIA WEC and Formula One TV commentator, renowned dishwasher loading pedant and Tunnocks Caramel wafer binger Allan McNish.
In a career that took Allan all the way up the motorsport ladder to Formula One, there have been plenty of cars to choose from. But which did he pick?
Best Car
“The best-balanced car I’ve ever driven was the Renault in 2003, the R23.
“That car was the one that was just an extension of you. So agile on the front of the car. It went where you put it and had a huge level of downforce. The only thing it didn’t have was maybe the pure raw horsepower. But as a car to drive, with real balance it was just beautiful.
“In terms of sportscars, I’ve got to say the most enjoyable, and the car that still lives with me is the 2008 Audi R10.
“By that time, we had sorted out the balance. We had huge power and torque and it was a brute of a car. It was one that you just had to attack it. It was a bit like a fight with the car every single time you drove it and you either came out the victor or it did.
“I really enjoyed that car, and it did so much more than people expected. So the 2008 version, post Spa!”
Worst Car
“No doubt it was the Lola T91/50 the F3000 car in ’91. That was the worst car I’ve ever driven in my life.
It didn’t matter what we did with that car. It just did what it wanted to do. It was totally out of control.
“It was a wee bit like that dog Fenton on YouTube!”
“Anyway, that was the worst car I’ve ever driven and probably the worst car for my career, in a way, but probably took me in a direction that ended up very positive.
“In terms of sportscars, it was probably the original Daytona Prototype because it was like a real step back in time, though the racing was good fun.
“Remember we’re talking about Porsche with their first carbon fibre cockpit in 1998. and, 10 years later, you’re going back into a tube frame chassis with the radiators at the front of your feet and a bar in the middle of the windscreen and things like that.
“The tyre was shocking as well, it was a bit of wood. It wasn’t as if it was a racing tyre I don’t actually think it was pneumatic!”
Dream Car
“I was looking back through some old Formula One pictures from the 70s and 80s and they just looked as if they had a real sort of beauty about them.
“That’s one of the reasons I like the Porsche 911 GT-98, because of the styling and the lines of it. It wasn’t hard-edged, it had a softness but underneath it had real power and energy.
“But I suppose the car that I would love to have raced was the McLaren in 1989, the V10, not the turbo (The MP4/5).
The reason for that one is because that was the first Formula One car I ever drove and the V10 engine was so tractable, so torquey that you could go around hairpins in third and fourth gear and it would still pull away – it was so adaptable in that respect.
“It wasn’t huge downforce levels at that point, they came maybe two or three years later. And it was still a manual gearbox. But it was two buttons on a steering wheel. And it was a big steering wheel because there was no power steering. You had a six-speed gearbox and a beautifully tractable screaming engine, that revved to 13,1. behind you.
“And that I think has got a little bit of personal emotion in it, but also, just everything about it was very much back to what the driver could do.
“The one that got away for me though was an odd one, but it led me to a different path to my life and career, and I’m actually thankful in some respects that it did.
“That was the Porsche 9R3 in 2000. We developed that car all the way through 1999 when I was racing for Toyota and then Champion in America.
“I was coming back and we had a 1998 GT1 with various different bits on it for different tests and then the LMP900 was tested once at Weissach and then it was put under a cover and the programme was stopped.
“I would love to have raced that car because I’d love to have seen what it could do against the competition of 2000, principally Audi, because I think that would have been an absolute battle royale, it would have been just stunning.
“But at the same time, because that programme was stopped, then I actually went to Audi and drove on the other side. So, in a way, it was one door closed and one door opened.
“I did pop back into Weissach to say hello back in 2003 or ’04 and they had a Carrera GT there, the road car that used the engine developed for the LMP car.
“The number one from the other factory car in 1998 asked if I’d like a go, Weissach has its own circuit and having put so much energy into the LMP programme it was quite a thing to experience the car that came out as an extension of the programme.
“I do have a soft touch towards that car.”
