Sébastien Bourdais: “We are ready”

Sébastien, we feel relaxed, peaceful, on the eve of the departure of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Is it serenity?
Serenity, I don't know, but we know we are ready. We did everything we had to do, we have a car that is fine. We have a lot of trust in each other. Serenity comes from these factors. We also know that at Le Mans everything can change in an instant. The big part is in front of us. But we did everything we had to do so we will have nothing to regret. Whether the race will bring it back to us, I don't know but we did what we had to do and we are ready to face the race.

Have four Peugeot on the first two lines, is this a way to be able to control the Audis at the start?
No, I do not think so. If Allan McNish is good at the start, it will be impossible to control him. We just hope to have the advantage in race pace in order to be able to distance ourselves. We will then see how the race will settle down. But we will have to know how to impose our pace and not let ourselves be attacked.

We are talking about a very heterogeneous field this year. Won't managing traffic be the hardest thing to manage?
This is always the hardest thing to deal with. Beyond the competition, if you are lucky enough to be ahead, the hardest element to manage is the external factor. The problem is that everyone has the same instruction not to move, to stay on their line, but there are drivers who have very particular lines! From there, you always have to prepare for the worst. That?s the trickiest thing at Le Mans. With the speeds the cars are closing in on, you are always at the mercy of having to make a decision, which you have to make in an instant and which will turn out to be good or bad, depending on the reaction of the other driver. It?s very delicate. We see big gaps on certain laps between certain drivers. I saw Stéphane (Sarrazin) take big risks on Wednesday. It was paying off, it was paying off, until someone put it in the grass.

Do you get scared when you overtake certain things?
Oh yes ! Necessarily. When you come around the corners Porsche, that the driver opens the door for you and, when you arrive alongside, he turns on you while you are at 250 km/h, you tell yourself that this is not going to go well. There are hot moments. The fewer the better. Sometimes it's like poker. On the one hand, you can't afford to wait behind the other car for the time it would take to overtake. But on the other hand, if you don?t wait and double down as soon as possible, you can hang on and lose everything. You will have to be very vigilant about this.