Chaunac: “A sledgehammer blow”

Hugues de Chaunac, you have the satisfaction of fourth place in the Oreca 01 AIM. But, with the abandonment of your Peugeot 908, you must be extremely disappointed?
To come to Le Mans, I understood last year that I had to come with a diesel. So the choice was very limited. The Peugeot having won last year, it was the best possible car. We have had a very good partnership with Peugeot for six months. There, I really thought, especially with what we saw during the tests, that it was going to work perfectly. We were exactly at the same level as the factory cars. We were very well prepared, with a very good crew of pilots. And then, all of a sudden, it came like a hammer blow for Olivier Quesnel and for me. One car, then two, it’s hard to believe it. Then when it becomes a massacre, we don't believe it. We are not in a bad dream but in a nightmare. We say to ourselves that it?s impossible, that there is something? For me, I had a lot of difficulty accepting that the car with which I was absolutely convinced of being on the podium was simply “out” (see video) of the race. It was something cruel.

When you saw the official Peugeots break one after the other, did you say to yourself that it was lost for yours?
No, I didn't think about it at all. Really, it didn’t cross my mind at all. All I said was that I told Olivier Quesnel “don't worry, there will be a Peugeot on the podium, we're going to give it our all”. I told the drivers “no limit, we have to go for this podium”. It could have been 3rd and maybe even 2nd place because we had a huge pace.

Don't you regret having driven them hard, which could have caused the engine to break?
It has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's not at all because we attacked hard, since it was planned, logically, based on what we thought of Audi, to drive for 24 hours like that. It wasn't the two hours that we did that damaged anything since we thought we would last 24 hours at that pace.

Are you disappointed with the level of the 908?
Not at all, because it comes from a very small problem, which they will not take long to identify. A small part that had to pass through quality control. Something happened that didn't work on the cars. I am not disappointed. On the contrary, with Olivier Quesnel, we have a big taste of revenge.

How are you going to resolve this problem?
There will be dismantling of the engines this week. It is at the end of the week that Bruno Famin will know exactly what happened. We need to carry out a real investigation because we need to see what the problem was, knowing that the engines have damage almost everywhere. But the problem that happened is isolated and it will be resolved before the next race.

Are you going to reconsider your 2010 project with the Peugeot 908 HDi FAP?
No, we continue. But we are mainly focused on 2011. Starting tomorrow, we must start attacking partners again. I think we did a very good job throughout the weekend. We brought our baby (the Oreca 01 AIM n°6), made at home, in fourth place, with few resources. So it's a sign from heaven that says “I punished you with the Peugeot but I'm going to make sure that the Oreca is well placed”.