Quote:
Originally Posted by CTD
I might be biased with Being there and cheering for Tom K especially after his Night/Morning stint. But this crash from McNish, was a crash to many. I don't care that he's fast, if he ends by looseing more by crashing.
If Dindo really retires after this year, i hope we will see a shuffle putting Tom K and McNish in to different cars.
One thing is sure. This years race clearly shows that Tom K is by far The better Le Mans driver over Allan McNish.
Allan is a great guy and i always hope The best for him, but now i just hope for Tom K to get a new co-driver. (instead of Allan)
At last. Seeing Allan at the podium, i have to point out that this is NOT an attack on Allans person. There is no doubt that Allan blame himself, and is absolutely destroyed by this.
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I think that the older guys are feeling the pressure from the younger guys like Andre, Ben and Loic. Even Tom had some interesting moments this weekend--during qualifying he waited until the last moment to pull out from behind a Porsche GT car, and during the race, he nudged a GT car into a spin or nearly into a spin at Mulsanne, and TK also nearly pushed the Krhon Ferrari off at Arnage, and if he didn't turn right when he did, it would've pushed the Ferrari off the road.
The old guys don't want to be shown up by the youngsters, clearly. But the deals with Allan and Tom and their issues/near issues shows how hard they're pushing. Why were they pushing? They were racing, and they were racing against guys like Andre and Ben, who have been consistently, insanely fast in an R18. If you put Duval with them, you'd without question would have the fastest Audi, period, and you'd probably have the new Audi Dream Team. I think that guys like Allan and Tom are a bit frustrated because they haven't won much in recent years and they want to prove that they can run with the whipper-snappers.
Of course, you can maybe even put some of this at the foot of Dr. Ullrich in that he doesn't like team orders, and that when he uses them at LM, it's usually very late in the event. Ullrich let the #1 and #2 Audis race, and I think that in the heat of the moment, drivers in both cars made some mistakes--we already talked about Allan and Tom's issues/near issues, but Marcel spun the car for whatever reason in the Porsche Curves while leading (tire pickup issue, hit a bump the wrong way, whatever), and took to the gravel when he out-braked himself and gave Kristensen the lead back, but we don't hear about Fassler's head being on the Audi chopping block. Even Ben had a little spin at pit-in, but we don't hear of his head on the chopping block either.
Maybe if Allan and Tom drove a little more like Dindo did--which was fast but careful--they might have won more races the past couple of years. I still think that Allan and TK are plenty fast, but they have to maybe manage risks better, and I actually find it ironic that one here has posted that if Allan was a bit more aggressive with the Ferrari this year, instead of hesitated like he reportedly did, the outcome may've been different. It seemed, like last year and with TK and Andy Priaux in '10, to have been a misunderstanding between what two drivers though that the other would do. That's racing and bleep happens.
I think that Allan and TK have jobs at Audi for life because of their past performance and loyalty to Audi, but they know that they're starring down the barrel of time to win LM again and win more races, and time's not on their side like it is with Andre, Ben and Loic.
And it's like with Gwyllion's post where Dindo talked about what happened--they were racing, and what happened could've just as easily happened to Dindo or Tom, or even to Ben, Marcel, or Andre. That happens in racing. You race for long enough, you'll make mistakes and have misunderstandings with fellow competitors. That's the unfortunate nature of the best, especially with the rules for LMP cars.