“Well, which way now?” The impatient driver sat to my left has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times, but on each of those occasions at least he knew where the hell he was going. Here we were, in the northerly fringes of the Sahara Desert in Morocco, sitting like a pair of lemons (rather than Le Mans) in a Red Bull-branded Volkswagen Race Touareg. “You’re the co-driver, tell me!” he implored. I realize he’s not joking. “OK, er, how about that-a-way?” – and I point forwards and then to the right a little, as if that added a smidge of critical thought.
This happened over 20 years ago, but I can remember it like yesterday. Allan McNish is my driver, and while it had seemed like a great idea to get someone who’s mastered endurance racing for Audi and Porsche around the world into a full-blown FIA Cross-Country Rally-Raid machine, I was doubting my wisdom somewhat as he selects first gear and sends this incredible desert racer shooting towards the horizon. It was hot, noisy, and I’m bring thrown around like a rag doll as we leap over the smaller sand dunes, and it feels like we’re spending more time in the air than in contact with the ground. Because we are.
It crossed my mind that the eagerness with which Volkswagen motorsport chief Kris Nissen had agreed to my ‘good idea’ for this test. But I also wondered if his miraculous escape from a fiery Porsche 962 crash at Fuji, Japan in 1988 – when he was bravely saved by fellow driver Paolo Barilla, and spent two weeks in a coma recovering from life-threatening burns – might have contributed to this ‘Devil may care’ decision!
But he wasn’t completely unhinged, and at least had his then-reigning Cross-Country Rally Raid World Cup champion Bruno Saby teach Allan how to handle Volkswagen’s sand dancer: “When we came to the first serious jump, I thought he’s going to brake,” recalled McNish of his show-and-tell run, as I downloaded his thoughts while we lounged around the swimming pool at the oasis where we were staying. “He’s got to brake… But no! He keeps the throttle nailed and changes up. This guy’s a madman! As we fly into the air, I’m thinking there is no way we’re getting out of this, we’re going to be splattered across the desert. This is it. I want to phone my mum and say goodbye. I am going to die.
“Then it dawns on you that this car is simply A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. It can drive over almost anything you can see in the desert and does it at speeds of up to 100mph. And I’m not going to die after all. Good news all round.”
Then McNish gave me the perhaps the weirdest and counter-intuitive comparison of motorsport vehicles I’ve ever heard: “When I tested an IndyCar at Fontana for Penske, I was lapping initially at about 205mph and it felt really nervous, especially when I was lifting off to turn in. I was thinking, ‘I’m not sure how the heck I’m going to average 225mph when it handles like this,’ but once you kept your toe in, in seemed to squat down and was much calmer. It seemed like the dampers needed to be working harder to be more effective, and this car felt the same.”
Which brings us back to venturing out into the wide-open expanse of the Sahara Desert, rather than a two-mile oval in California where all he’d had to do was turn left. At least McNish had a clue what he was doing, whereas I – from the co-driver’s seat – was giving vague pointing signals whenever I saw a dune that I fancied the look of. At one majestic point, Allan got the car sliding perfectly across the top of a giant one, with a massive slip angle, and it felt like we were surfing a wave – a rare moment of neither moving up nor down that felt truly weightless. I realize there’s nobody here to witness the majesty of this moment. Because there’s nobody around for miles.
I was also aware that, as co-driver, I need to keep a vague idea of where we’ve come from – so that we don’t get lost in the wilderness. It gave me a great respect for those who’d competed in the Dakar Rally when it was legendary in scope – like the 1986 Paris-Algiers-Dakar route that featured 9,300 miles across 10 countries in the days before GPS.
“Doing the Dakar proper, I would imagine it’s like doing the Sebring 12 Hours every day for three weeks,” said McNish, who’s won the Floridian sportscar classic four times. “The g-force wouldn’t be anything like as severe as driving a sportscar, but the constant steering input and kick-back would be incredibly demanding, as well as the heat inside the cockpit.
“You could take this car anywhere and it would drive over just about anything. Driving it in competition is one thing, but imagine having one in your garage on the edge of the desert? It would be the ultimate toy that you could play in wherever the hell you liked.”
And that’s exactly what we did for the afternoon, our fun only curtailed by an approaching sandstorm, which we’d assumed was just some clouds rolling in. Who knew it rained in the desert? Er, no. This was a violent storm cell comprising only sand.
Fortunately, our grave peril was averted as VW sent out one of its incredible support trucks to retrieve us, and I remember climbing into it and slamming the door shut just as the sandstorm struck with a vengeance. Die another day, then. Now please take me back to civilization! I know where I’m going there.
