It’s your third time competing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans this season. Now, you’ve come a long way haven’t you, from racing in Sriperumbedur and Kari to now racing down the Mulsanne straight?
Yeah, it’s my third Le Mans this year. I’ve been there now a few times and Le Mans is one of those races where I think you don’t appreciate it until you do it. It’s such a special race, such a difficult race. I’ve done the Monaco Grand Prix, I’ve done the British Grand Prix, I’ve done all sorts of races in different categories but Le Mans is just such a difficult race. There is a lot of hanging around, and all the tradition and the pomp, you know the French love that. I’m not a big fan of all that but from 3pm on Saturday to 3pm on Sunday? Just magic, it’s magic.
You’ve done Silverstone, you’ve done Monaco, you’ve done Spa and now Le Mans. This race is obviously one of the three biggest events in motorsport. Could you describe for me the romance of the event, the atmosphere that surrounds it from the driver’s point of view?
It’s one of those tracks where it comes alive as the week builds up. It’s a strange event because we actually – I’m going to Le Mans early tomorrow morning – so we’re actually there for a whole week which is very unusual. As you know, we normally show up on a Thursday morning or whatever. But because of all the tradition, you do the scrutineering in the town, so all the race cars are taken into the Le Mans city centre… there’s a lot of tradition and stuff involved.
It means that you’re there for a longer time but it means that the tension sort of builds as the week goes on. You see the crowds building up … and eventually by the time you get to race-day, it’s like 300,000 people or something, at least 280,000 people. The campsites get full, the crowd starts building and even for us as drivers, every day you go along, the tension starts to build. A big part of the challenge is to stay chilled and to stay relaxed because obviously the race is only at the end of the week. But, yeah, there is something special about driving there.
It’s a street circuit. In the daytime we go cycling. I normally go with all the other drivers, we get together. Bruno Senna is also there and Darren Turner, a couple of the Ferrari guys, Gianmaria Bruni. So we all go cycling together. You know it’s a bit strange – you’re riding around the circuit in the daytime and then you know as the week goes along, you’re going to be racing down those streets at 300 kilometers per hour, or more than that really. So it’s very special. And then the big part is obviously the night. The last two years I’ve ended up with the night shift and I think this year again I’ll end up with the night shift. And that’s really, really hard. Last year was particularly hard. I think I got in the car at two-fifteen in the morning and I got out at ten past six. It was nearly four hours. Four hours is the maximum you can do at any track and I did 3:55.