‘I’m fine. Well I’m feeling a little light headed after a haircut’

As McNish’s Audi R18TDI disintegrated into a mangled wreck in the split-second after it hit the tyre wall at the Dunlop Curves at 140mph, “feeling fine” was not what he was experiencing as he sat strapped in his cabin.

“I can remember the car hitting the tyre wall backwards,” he recalled. “I knew there was going to be an impact, but I had no idea it was going to be so violent. A lot of things were flying about the cockpit, so I had no visual image the car was rolling.

“I remember thinking, ‘Crikey, this is lasting a long time,’ because normally you’ve got one hit and then the car maybe does something, then it stops. This just kept on going.”

That McNish survived the horrific smash, let alone walked out of the car unaided after marshals had righted the wreck, is testament not only to the build quality of Audi, but also the safety measures introduced into motorsport, many at the insistence of Professor Sid Watkins, who has a home in the Scottish Borders.

Liverpool-born Watkins, the professor of neurosurgery who founded the Brain & Spine Foundation in 1992 and was brought into Formula One by Bernie Ecclestone in the late Seventies, had an early influence on McNish’s career.

Racing for Jackie Stewart’s British Formula Three team at Brands Hatch in 1989, McNish, inching towards the title, crashed during qualifying and “bumped” his head.

“I rolled the car and Jackie sent me to see Professor Sid,” McNish said. “I’d never heard of this ‘Sid’ before, but he immediately banned me from driving for six weeks.

“I thought, ‘Who the hell are you? Ban me from driving and that’s my British F3 Championship gone.’ But that was it; no racing because of this ‘stupid’ doctor. So, having bought a plane ticket for Glasgow, I told my Dad to pick me up at the airport.

“The plane duly landed in Edinburgh. I’d got on the wrong flight, because my head wasn’t 100 per cent. That’s when I realised the ‘doc’ knew far more than I did about head injuries.”

That experience, and acceptance of medical advice, contributed to McNish making his full recovery after Le Mans.

“After being checked at the circuit and scanned at the local hospital, the docs had me under surveillance till 1.30am,” he said. “The rest of the following week I was under strict instructions to do absolutely nothing — no e-mails, no phone calls. Nothing.

“I’ve had enough incidents in my life to know they are the guys who truly know what’s going on and whether the driver is actually fit enough to jump back in the car to go racing.

“I’m certainly not going to question anything they say.”

Today will not be the first time that McNish has driven his race car since the crash, though. Only ten days after the smash, the Scot was at Lausitzring in Germany for a day and a half’s test.

Was he nervous? “Nervous?” he smiled. “When you’ve had a knock, there’s always a question mark over whether you’re fully ready to get back into it, and whether you’ll be as fast as you were before.

“Through the course of the test, everything just fell back into a natural rhythm. Lap times and consistency were quickly back to where roughly they should be.

“I slept on it overnight, went back out the next day for a couple of long runs and felt OK. So now, we’re ready to get back into the action at Imola.”

McNish, who will partner Tom Kristensen, his close friend and eight-times Le Mans winner, faces a stern test in Sunday’s six-hour race.

“Traditionally the Audi has been strong over the long races, while the Peugeots seem to fair better over the shorter ‘sprints’, like Imola,” the Scot said. “We need to raise our game a bit this weekend but, just like any other race, we’re here to win.”