McNish urges Audi to race R15 more for Le Mans
by Bradley Wint on July 15th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Audi Le Mans racer, Alan McNish believes that Audi needs to allow them to drive the new R15 more, because they need the chance to learn to car in an effort to possibly reclaim the title from the current champions, Peugeot. He says this after their few test runs were curtailed because of weather conditions, basically putting them at a serious disadvantage.
>“I think it’s a good thing in a way, because it’s the first time they [Audi] have had a punch in the nose for a wee while and it is quite good just to refresh everybody’s memory,” said McNish. “Peugeot will be back to defend the honour so that sets us up pretty well, but there is no question that we have got to be better than we were to put them under the pressure that we need to do.
“You do need to race, that’s why it is called motor racing. We have never, not with the R8 or the R10, raced between Sebring and Le Mans with that car. It has only ever been testing, so that wouldn’t have changed this year. If we were racing with the R10 we wouldn’t have learned anything extra as to what we did in our testing.
“The main problem with our testing was that it was rained out most of the time and when it wasn’t we had two shunts. One at Sebring and one at Ricard, which then put us 30 hours behind. So we were a little bit late, and that is just a fact of life. But of course we have to race, you cannot, as a driving crew or a team, go from Le Mans to Le Mans without being out there and going for it. That doesn’t work, the competition is too high.”
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