1000 Miles of Sebring – Romain Dumas: “Everyone is hiding”

Roman, this best time in the first Free Practice session, was it a surprise for you?

Frankly, not quite. We didn't do much driving on the first day of the Prologue, as we were doing more of a shakedown of the car. We were already pretty good on Saturday afternoon. The LM P2s are very close and it remains to be seen who did what. What's good is that this morning we all left on new tires. We don't know how much other people had gas, but we had a lot. I also don't think it's the race that suits us best because of the bumps and tight turns. The car is more made for circuits like Monza or Le Mans. In any case, this best time is a good thing to take. 

Does this bode well for this weekend?

If we are lucky enough to continue our momentum from last year in terms of reliability. You must not do anything stupid. The difficulty will be the heat, which should create a gap with the LM P2s, because they have greater tire degradation and their engine suffers a little more in these conditions. We will have to see when Alpine et Toyota will pick up the pace. I think Toyota is hiding its game a lot, but it's so big that we start to have doubts. Alpine looks pretty good.

You see Alpine in the favorite position?

At the end of the Prologue, Alpine showed that they were consistent in the 1'48, while we should be in 1'49. What will Toyota do? They were slower than us, but how well were they hiding? We must not lie to each other, everyone is hiding, even us. The question is how much.