Simon Pagenaud: “Showing how competitive the Acura is”

simon pagenaud, how is this week going so far?

It went well. We took pole and our goal was to show how competitive the Acura is, which we managed to do. This is what Acura asked us to do and it's great for the team to have managed to accomplish this. In addition, we are not yet sure of the reliability of the car, because we have not yet carried out a 24-hour test and we started relatively late. It's a complicated car with some pretty advanced technology. Time to put everything concerning the electronics and the sensor brakes in place, for this whole symphony to begin, we drove for the first time in August. That's not enough time to prepare for a 24-hour race. We've covered quite a few miles despite everything, but we don't really have a goal other than trying to get to the end and fixing it when something breaks. We are aware that we are at the limit when it comes to reliability.

All manufacturers seem worried about reliability...

It's normal, the cars are still very young and it's the first race of a new era. I'm happy to be there and being someone who loves technology, I was delighted to have been able to help Acura develop this ARX-06 which came together very well. The chassis being from Oreca, it's like a loop closing for me since it was with Oreca that I participated in my first 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2008. It's been a treat so far. In the race, there will probably be times when we have problems and we will have to deal with them. 

The team was very strong during the Roar, dominating almost all of the Free Practice sessions and then qualifying, but you were further behind during the final pre-race practices. Was this wanted?

Yes, we moved to a completely different system. We were in attack mode until qualifying where we took pole. Once the goal was achieved, we focused on the race and relaxed the effort. As we know we are at the limit in terms of reliability, we tried to be cooler on the curbs, take more care of the brakes, etc. We lost performance because of this, which was intentional. We also put race-specific parts on the car this morning (Friday), so clearly the idea was to avoid damaging the car and it's the same for the #10 (the Meyer Shank Racing Acuras). and WTRAndretti did not take part in the last 20-minute test session. Editor's note). What's surprising is that the Cadillacs went the other way. These are different approaches, because we have different objectives due to the development time of the cars.

What worries you most: electronic problems and lack of spare parts?

I'm not too worried about the spare parts, we have what we need, apart from what we can't control, which is the parts coming from outside. The problem is that it's such a young car that it's often breakages that we don't yet know about that occur. The electronics actually play tricks on us, since sometimes the car starts in the garage and 25 meters further on this is no longer the case. It's the same for everyone unfortunately. These cars are so advanced from an electronic point of view and when the computers no longer communicate with each other or between the sensors, it becomes complicated. I don't really have any apprehensions and I don't really set myself any goals. We're going to do the best we can, try to do it differently by saving the car more than usual and we're going to hope that it works.

In terms of driving, how do you feel with the car?

I really like this car from day one. I was a lot of part of the development with the Acura engineers in terms of the engine, it's something that I really enjoyed. There are many things we can do behind the wheel to adapt it to our driving. This morning (Friday), I had a blast behind the wheel. It is a prototype which is supposed to be heavier on paper, but which remains relatively manageable. It is also very stable.

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