The Scot helping drive forward a new Formula 1 team

It is, he admitted, "very wide" in its job description.

McNish said driver development hardly existed when he started out [Getty Images]

McNish said his driver development role simply did not exist in this form when he was breaking through in the 1980s, although one local motorsport hero - David Leslie - did take him under his wing.

Now it all has a "much more structured format".

However, he said the sport remained all about preparation, work ethic and being prepared for setbacks like he suffered in his own career.

"It's been a bit of a roller coaster at times," he said.

"It's not as if it's been a straight linear road up and with that, you also learn to take a little bit of pain on the route.

"That's one definite thing in any sports person, there is going to be pain and it's how you return from that, how you come back from it is, I think, the defining point of a person's sporting career."

Making it to the starting grid in F1 was a high point in McNish's own career [Getty Images]

Not that McNish did not taste success - when asked to pick a high point, he said there had been a "lot of them".

Among them was winning his first ever kart race in Morecambe in 1982 when he got the confidence that came from realising he was "good at something".

"And then obviously, winning Le Mans, because it opened up so many doors that I didn't expect - I didn't realise the world stage Le Mans was," he added.

There was also, of course, the little matter of reaching the starting grid in F1 himself.

McNish won Le Mans three times as a driver [Getty Images]

At the other end of the spectrum was a day when tragedy struck.

"I think personally a low point obviously was Donington in 1990 when the spectator was killed - that definitely was one," he said.

"It's just a big change to your life, it doesn't matter what stage you are in, it's a big change to your life."

One of the biggest differences between his era and now is that racers are starting much younger and are, possibly, "more open" thanks, in part, to the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive.

He cites Audi driver Gabriel Bortoleto as a case in point - an "absolutely lovely, natural person".

McNish said a lot of the nostalgia for years gone by was down to "rose-tinted glasses" [Getty Images]

McNish also dismissed a lot of the nostalgia for racing of yesteryear as "rose-tinted glasses to a great extent".

"If you go back and watch a video of Spa, you know, the holy era of V10s, V12s, and you look at Spa, the gap on the grid was like 0.5, 0.7, 0.8 seconds between one car to the next," he said.

"It was like 10 seconds over the course of the grid - it was huge.

"And now we're talking about one second being from first to last - so the competitiveness of everybody is much, much closer."

As for his current team - they are planning long term rather than expecting immediate success - with a "long road" ahead to be in a position to fight for race wins or challenge for the championship.

The racing director said he liked Freddie Slater's attitude the moment he saw him race [Getty Images]

And is there another Allan McNish out there?

Possibly, he said, in the shape of Freddie Slater who they signed aged 14.

"I watched him fight his way through a kart race and it was that attitude that was the thing that really stood out," he said.

"It was his ability to, when the car wasn't quick, to be able to get through and muscle it through to the front.

"I would say the mentality as opposed to necessarily the skill set - but there, that was something that ticked the box for me."

That is high praise indeed from a man who scaled the heights of racing during his driving days and is now passing on everything he has learned.

• Ex-F1 driver McNish named Audi racing director