“I thought, ‘Right, what am I going to do?’” McNish says. “I went out to Japan for a Formula Nippon test but there was a bizarre thing in the contract, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t sign that’. I went back home and Tom Kristensen got the opportunity instead. Funnily enough, I spoke to Tom afterwards and he said, ‘No, that’s not in the contract’, so they must have taken it back out. That was Tom’s break, long before we got together at Audi and formed such a strong relationship.
“Then, in IndyCar, there was a test with me and the likes of Lehto, Mark Blundell and Dominic Dobson. It was a very clear programme, everybody on used tyres, new tyres, high fuel, race runs… It’s no secret that I came out quickest in every dynamic, but they gave the seat to Mark, because Mark had a connection with McLaren, and it was a Mercedes engine in the car.
“There was a point there, if I’m very honest with you, where I thought, ‘What do I have to do?’ I had delivered what I could deliver, but it wasn’t enough due to other parameters, which is fine, because Mark had that connection and relationship, and he used that really, really well.
“It took me to Jost Capito, who was running the Porsche Supercup championship. He said, ‘Come and do a race’, so I did the 1996 British Grand Prix support event in the VIP car. Porsche then called me at the end of the year and said, ‘We’re looking to revamp our sportscar driver line-up, would you like to have a run?’ I did it and my career took off again.”
A ticket to F1 with Toyota
Take off it did, with McNish establishing himself as a key member of Porsche’s endurance line-up through 1997 and taking an emotional first victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1998 alongside Frenchman Laurent Aïello and Monegasque Stéphane Ortelli.
