Allan McNish starts his diesel-engined Audi sportscar from second place on the 28-car grid in the São Paulo Six Hour race tomorrow (SAT). Brazilian ex-Formula One driver Lucas di Grassi, who joins McNish and regular co-driver Tom Kristensen (Den) for the race in Brazil, swept their Audi R18 ultra around the historic 2.676-mile Autódromo de Interlagos track in a personal fastest time of 1min 23.147secs, an average speed of 115.95mph in today’s (FRI) 20-minute qualifying session. Di Grassi is making his debut for the “factory” Audi Sport team in a one-off race on “home” soil.

“I’m very happy with second place on the grid,” commented McNish. “It will be tough at the [rolling] start because of the lack of hybrid boost which we saw at Silverstone but the race is long and I think we have a very good chance of success.”

Dumfries-born McNish and record eight-time Le Mans 24 Hour race winner Kristensen begin the race trailing Audi Sport team-mates Marcel Fässler (CH)/André Lotterer (D)/Benoît Tréluyer (F) by just 4.5-points in the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Allan continued: “Lucas [di Grassi] had a fantastic qualifying session and did an extremely good job. He’s a local hero and has fitted into the team extremely well with Tom and I. We knew we didn’t have the outright pace in qualifying but the race is what we’ve been focusing all our efforts towards and have achieved a good race set-up”.

The hybrid-diesel of Fässler/Lotterer/Tréluyer starts the Brazilian race from third position on the grid (1:23.332s) with Alex Wurz/Nicholas Lapierre (Toyota) in pole-position (1:22.363s).

The race begins tomorrow (SAT) at 1600*.

Source : Allan McNish