Allan McNish and his Audi team-mates had a new toy to play with in this year's Spa-Francorchamps 1000km as the German company's R18 TDI made its race debut at the Belgian circuit.
It was also the final race prior to Le Mans and the first time the two sportscar turbo-diesel superpowers, Audi and Peugeot, had matched up with their new-for-2011 coupes, so there was plenty of talking points going in. Audi's prototype coupe - its first for more than a decade - locked out the first the top three positions on the grid in qualifying, then came the race.
Allan, never short of a talking point or two, takes up the story from here...
