Series business as Scot laps up Le Mans

Scotland's diminutive racer, Allan McNish, is poised to clinch drivers' championship in the American Le Mans Series today after grabbing pole position for the penultimate round a fortnight after sealing the manufacturers' title for Audi.

In qualifying, McNish left his best till last in the 20-minute session lapping the 2.25-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway, tucked away in the middle of the Nevada desert, in 1min 12.688sec. It was his fourth, and the car's seventh pole of the season. The Scot was 0.789sec ahead of the leading Panoz of David Brabham with the second Audi of Frank Biela third.

The 30-year-old from Dumfries who, along with his teammate Rinaldo Capello, has won five of the last six races, lines up for the 165- minute sprint knowing victory will see him crowned champion. But the prospect terrifies the former Le Mans winner.

"It's terrifying," he said. "It's very nice having won all these races and being back in the fight, but you've got to stay focused and just keep doing what you've been doing up until now. But what nags away at the back of the mind is how easy it could all disappear. All it takes is one silly, niggly mistake or the actions of another driver and I'd be scuppered.

"Okay, I'm 16 points ahead of Jorg, but there are 25 points to the winner this weekend and another 25 in the final race in Adelaide at the end of the year. If Jorg wins and we don't finish, suddenly the boot's on the other foot. It's a terrific position to be in, but also one that's pretty nerve-racking." McNish holds a 10-point lead over his Italian teammate but, more importantly, is 16 ahead of BMW's Jorg Muller. And while the BMW will again threaten, McNish believes the biggest threat will come from the former Stewart Grand Prix racer Jan Magnussen.

"They were leading by more than 20 seconds before the LMP-1's V8 engine blew up," McNish said, "and I'm sure they'll be determined to pick up where they left off a fortnight ago. What I have to concentrate on is getting to the first corner first and building up a healthy lead so we can ease off a bit as the race goes on."

o Bathgate's Dario Franchitti starts seventh on the grid for today's final round of the CART FedEx Championship at the two-mile Superspeedway in Fontana.

The 27-year-old Scot averaged 238.099mph as he posted a time of 30.578sec, two places behind his Team Kool Green teammate Paul Tracy in the one million dollar winner-take-all finale.

The pole position though went to defending champ Juan Montoya. The young Colombian, who will replace Jenson Button in the Williams-BMW F1 team next year, set the fastest average speed yet recorded when he lapped in 30.452sec, an average of 242.253mph.

Points leader Gil de Ferran was second with a lap of 30.537sec (239.198 mph) and Helio Castroneves rounded out the top three at 30.566sec (238.971).

o As Colin McRae rested after clinching a solitary point which maintained his world championship bid at the end of the Sanremo Rally, the 32-year-old from Lanark this week called for a dramatic overhaul of safety in the World Rally Championship following his 80mph crash in Corsica which left him nursing a shattered left cheekbone.

The Scot was left dangling upside down in his wrecked Ford Focus with leaking petrol dripping on all around him for the best part of an hour while medical crews assessed his injuries before transferring the injured Scot to a waiting ambulance. Now the 1995 world champ, working on building up his stamina before heading to Australia for the penultimate round next month, has called for an emergency helicopter to be on standby for every world championship event. "Corsica was the worst accident I've ever had in my career and to be stuck inside a car for an hour is really too long no matter how damaged the car is or in what precarious position it is.

"The circumstances of my accident may well have been pretty extreme but accidents often are and it's crucial that the safety services are in a position to deal with any eventuality.

"To my mind, and I've thought about it long and hard since the accident, the best solution would be to have a medical team that everybody knew at every rally on standby in an emergency helicopter." Perhaps the driver with the most influence in world rallying, McRae's views are sure to have an impact in the organisation of next year's championship and already Shekhar Mehta, the FIA rallies president, has backed the Scot's views. McRae will line up in Australia just six points behind the championship leader Marcus Gronholm and tied with his Ford teammate Carlos Sainz Q one point behind second-placed Richard Burns in his Subaru.

McRae is very concerned about the current level of risk faced by rally drivers. "I think Corsica is a very dangerous event and some of the drops on a couple of the new stages which were included this year were horrendous. I hate to think what might have happened if we'd gone off at one of those."

McRae, whose co-driver Nicky Grist escaped uninjured from the crash, admitted the mistake which caused his accident was human error. It's understood he entered what should have been a fourth- gear corner flat-out in sixth. But the Scot doesn't believe that should be used as any excuse.

"We all know the reason for the crash was a mistake in the pace notes somewhere but how exactly it happened we don't know," he said. Whether the wrong instructions were read by Grist or McRae misheard them will probably never be known but the stakes are getting higher and higher with every event.

"There's not a driver who isn't pushing the car to the limit," he said. "Everybody wants to get the best result and because of that accidents are always liable to happen. I've argued for too long now that the tyres we're using on tarmac aren't big enough to cope with the weight and forces which we are putting through them.

"Right through every tarmac event, including Sanremo where I had to push the car to the limit just to grab sixth position, you're driving on the edge of grip and I basically don't agree with it.

"At least when we crash we have a huge amount of protection built round us, but the thought of a car going off in a tarmac event at a corner which is surrounded by spectators as we have in Spain and Portugal just doesn't bear thinking about."

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