Given that Nicolas caught a virus before the weekend and had to be replaced by Marcel Fässler – as well as having another new driver in the same car as me in Simon Pagenaud – everyone was doing well, but then Marcel had the crash. We saw the accident and it looked quite heavy, so again it was good news that he wasn't injured too much. For sure I was really disappointed when we retired, but that's just part of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and for that I think I'll do it again next year because I want to finish the race.

It was fantastic to have Nico back in the car at the Nürburgring and competitive straightaway. We had tested before the race weekend at Magny-Cours and that had gone pretty well, and everyone was excited to be racing again after two months off. We did a good job with the engineers and the team to set up the car. I did a good lap in qualifying, and it was nice for us to start sixth on the grid, but I also made a small mistake during the session.

When I was leaving the pit-lane to go out on the green light, I saw the guy show me his hand to stop to check the tyres. I stopped, but a bit too far to the right, so I waited for everybody to pass and reversed, but you're not allowed to do that and the decision was consequently made to exclude me from the race. That was really painful, and I didn't really understand why it had happened. Hugues de Chaunac and the sponsors obviously weren't very happy and we put in an appeal and raced, but even if we hadn't eventually had the gearbox problem, we knew we would have been disqualified anyway.

We come to Britain next, and I love Silverstone. It's one of the quickest circuits we still have in F1 and prototypes, and I think it's one of the most challenging tracks we race at during the season. I'm really looking forward to it. Maybe we'll have some rain too which could help us to have a good result, and why shouldn't we finish on the podium in the last race? That would be a good way for us to begin to prepare for next season.

The Le Mans Series is a really good series, the ambience is good and the performance of the cars is pretty competitive. There are a lot of quick drivers out there too, and I'm enjoying it a lot. That's why I think I'll keep doing this next year, but I do have one reservation.

When we started the season, the regulations were much better for the diesel-engined cars, but you know, I'm a racer, and it's really painful for me to be sixth on the grid and ten seconds slower than pole position. That's not acceptable for me personally, but they were the rules this year and if we started the season and accepted them, we can't then complain.

For sure for next year I'm waiting to see what the new rules will be before re-signing, because if it stays like this I'm not really interested. Like I say, I'm a racer and I want to win races, but with the rules like they are at the moment that's just not possible…

A bientôt,

Olivier

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