1812km of Qatar – Mathieu Jaminet (Porsche): “Not our cleanest copy as a team”

Mathieu, what is your assessment of this weekend and this race?

There are positives and negatives despite everything. Personally, my first race of WEC went pretty well. I did my two stints quietly, it was fine. On our car, it's a bit of a shame because without a few small problems, we could have played a bit higher, but it's clear that we lacked pace compared to those in front. We had two or three small problems that made us lose time. We scored the points for 10th place, while 7th or 8th place would have been possible in the regular way. The n°6 didn't have a good day with a few mistakes, they quickly found themselves a lap behind and they didn't manage to come back. It wasn't our cleanest copy as a team. It gives us points to work on for Imola, Spa and Le Mans.

It's surprising to see you in so much difficulty this weekend, a year after the hat-trick. Porsche here in Qatar…

Despite everything, I remember that we managed to be somewhere around 8th place, without going super fast and despite a lack of rhythm and bad luck. By not having the fastest car, we were fairly in front of the Alpine, ahead of the Cadillacs when they were light years ahead of us. Toyota had a perfect race and even if Ferrari makes mistakes every hour, they are so much faster that they still manage to finish on the podium. That's the game. Not an ideal first, but there are things to learn in order to be ready for Imola, Spa and Le Mans.

What happened at the start of the race with the puncture on your car?

We took a piece of debris on the front right, and then we had a technical problem, so really bad luck. It was a piece of metal from a GT I think, there was a lot of debris at the start of the race. Julien [Andlauer] couldn't do anything.

Next appointment for you: Sebring, in IMSA (March 15). How do you approach it?

I'm happy to be back in the States, Sebring is one of my favorite races of the season. There's a great atmosphere and the track is great. We had a good test there and as always, the race is going to be very close. I hope we'll be there in the last hours and that we won't have had too many problems to be able to play something. In any case, I'm looking forward to it, it's one of the best times of the year

Interview by Valentin Glo, in Losail

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