You competed in your first 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2009 at the wheel of an LM P1 (Oreca 01-AIM with Tiago Monteiro and Stéphane Ortelli). What do you remember of that first experience?

"It was tough, I think I was not mentally prepared for the race. We had a crash right in the beginning of the race and from then on the car was never the same. So I think if I got into that race with my mentality of nowadays, I would have been much more relaxed. We were struggling to keep up the pace with our sister car (the #11 driven by Olivier Panis, Soheil Ayari and Nicolas Lapierre, Ed.). We pushed very, very hard but I mean it destroyed the tyres. It's one of those things that inexperienced drivers do. Now, I would have done it differently. We ended up not finishing the race because we had another instance in the middle of the race, and the other car was doing very well so it was better to keep spare parts for them rather than fixing the car for us. And it finished fifth which was a fantastic result for Oreca at the time."

Then you spent two years in LM GTE Pro. What do you remember of the Aston Martin Racing years?

"It was fantastic, we were so competitive…in 2013 (with Frédéric Makowiecki and Rob Bell, Ed.), we were in the lead with five hours to the end with a two-minute advantage, but the race ended very abruptly with a crash and that was that. In 2014 (with Darren Turner and Stefan Mücke, Ed.), again with about five hours to go, I was fighting with Gianmaria for the lead (Bruni in AF Corse's winning Ferrari F458 Italia, Ed.). We had a great battle, it was fantastic fun, but then we had a failure in the car, so half an hour lost changing the steering column. It's one of those things and very frustrating because you know you can get to the podium, you could have had a good race twice in a row, and not finishing it! But this year again, we didn't have the same case but we finished and were proud of it."

And how do you feel about endurance racing, having spent significant time in single-seaters, compared to Formula 1 (46 Grand Prix total)?

"I really enjoy it. The racing is almost like a long sprint, you have to go flat out the whole time. We are not saving tyres at all, we are pushing, pushing, pushing and not saving the tyres as much as you would in a Formula 1 car. And the competition is getting stronger and stronger, the plateau this year, it's insane how strong it is. Most certainly the strongest grid in LM P2 history. I heard from a lot of people that are not in LM P2 that they are really intereseted in doing LM P2 next year because it's such great competition. Alexander Wurz said he's interested in doing LM P2 next year, especially with a bit more power (100 hp, Ed.)!"