24h Le Mans
35-year-old Timo Bernhard will be aiming for a second Le Mans victory this year after his 2010 win with Audi. He tells us how he’s feeling as he looks forward to this year’s race, which remains wide open.
Who will clock up the fastest lap? The fastest stint? Timo Bernhard doesn’t really have the answers. “It’s hard to say. The #8 R18 was very quick on the Test Day [3:21:375 for Lucas Di Grassi]. In terms of speed, the three manufacturers entered [Audi, Porsche and Toyota] will be quite close and in the end, it’ll come down to reliability and a bit of race strategy, and then the changing weather.”
Bernhard, who can boast five victories at the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, is used to traffic out on the track and thinks that overtaking will be more important than ever this year. “It will be important to keep a cool head in all the traffic, because there are four extra cars [there will be 60 cars on the grid now that the Automobile Club de l’Ouest has built its new garages]. Also there are fewer LM P1 cars [only two cars per outfit whereas there were 11 works’ cars last year, Nissan included] and there are more GTs to overtake. That is a potential risk all the time for us and we have to take short-notice decisions every lap.”
Does having just two cars change much for Porsche? “Sure, there are two less cars but otherwise the quality of the teams entered is the same, we still have three very strong manufacturers on the grid, and six cars fighting so it will be a close call!” And what about the threat from Rebellion? Are they keeping a closer eye on the Swiss team than usual? “They are definitely closer than in previous years, that’s a fact. They also have a higher top speed than us. We are not aiming to beat them on that front because that would affect our reliability. We are watching their performances, we can never underestimate anyone and, I’ll admit, if they have a clean run and do a clean job, everything is open.”
With Nelson Piquet Jr recording 336 km/h at Test Day and a “modest” 324.9 km/h for Romain Dumas in the #2 Porsche 919 Hybrid, the Rebellions are out in front when it comes to overall pace! “Yes, but we reach our top speed before they do! But because we have to save on fuel, we take our foot of the pedal earlier, which sometimes causes a few complications in the braking zones. It’s not easy to get around one another so we have to be smart. The difference can be seen in the fast corners, where we have better downforce.”
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