Vincent Landais: “Lost this objective which was to have pleasure”

How are you doing when the situation must not be easy to live with?

There are people who are worried and sad for me. I was surprised to receive so many requests, but I admit that I am doing pretty well.

From the outside it seemed like there was a lot of pressure?

En WRC, the co-pilot has a lot to manage. I invested a lot in this project and I was trying to relieve Pierre-Louis of some of this pressure.

To explain this start to the season, was the step too high?

I don't think she is that much. From Rome or Alba last year, or in Sardinia with a 4th time despite a touch, we said to ourselves that it was not infeasible. We also knew that we did not have the latest version of the i20 and that despite everything we managed to set times. It was just the learning that continued. This ecosystem, however, likes precocity. The result must arrive very quickly and if you don't take this parameter out of your head, you add pressure to yourself, and that's where it works even less. If you don't quickly get a good place, you feel like you're not good enough and you don't approach the problem as you should, falling into a kind of spiral. You have to be able to breathe and take your time.

Was there still fun?

When you find yourself at the top and you know the stakes, you don't care about feeling pleasure. What you want is to do well, or even do too well. It’s a full-time job and we had perhaps lost a little this objective which was to have fun and which would have allowed us to relax. Realizing how fortunate it is to evolve at this level... The season during which it worked best was 2019. It was a year during which we took things in hindsight and told ourselves that it was our last opportunity to get the title…and that’s where we were strongest! Now, I wish Pierre-Louis good luck for the future.

Do you have any idea what you're going to do?

The WRC stopped like that after eleven years of career, but I have no intention of not getting into a car again. I have already received a few offers. I have projects that I have been putting off or that the time spent in the WRC did not allow me to completely carry out. I am thinking in particular of a piloting center in Lapland based in Rovaniemi which I will be able to take full charge of and perhaps develop.