Allan
McNish

Allan McNish was born on 29 December 1969 in Dumfries, Scotland. Like fellow Dumfries and Galloway driver David Coulthard, he began in karting, and both later received the McLaren/Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year award. McNish won the Formula Vauxhall Lotus title in 1988 and finished runner-up to David Brabham in the 1989 British Formula 3 Championship. He raced in Formula 3000 from 1990 to 1992, finishing fourth overall in his first season there, and tested for McLaren and Benetton along the way. No Formula One seat materialised at first, and in 1995 he returned to Formula 3000 with Paul Stewart Racing.

His sports car career began with Porsche in 1996. In 1998 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the factory team in the Porsche 911 GT1, sharing the car with Laurent Aïello and Stéphane Ortelli.

McNish reached Formula One in 2001 as development driver for the newly formed Toyota team. In 2002 he got a race seat alongside Mika Salo. He started 16 races and scored no championship points. In Malaysia he narrowly missed out on the points after a pit lane error by the team. For 2003 Toyota replaced both drivers with Olivier Panis and Cristiano da Matta, and McNish spent that year as a test driver for Renault.

He went back to sports car racing in 2004 and won the 12 Hours of Sebring, then also entered the DTM in 2005. He won the American Le Mans Series three times, including 2006 and 2007 with Audi. He won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2008 with Tom Kristensen and Rinaldo Capello, and again in 2013 with Kristensen and Loïc Duval. With Kristensen and Duval he also became FIA World Endurance Champion in 2013. In December 2013 he announced his retirement from full-time racing. After retiring he took on a role with Audi Sport and, from the 2017/18 season, was team principal of Audi's Formula E team. He also worked as a commentator and pundit for BBC Sport. In 2026 he took charge of the Audi F1 Team's driver development programme and, in addition, became its Racing Director. He won the Segrave Trophy in 2009 and 2014.

Source: Wikipedia, “Allan McNish”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.