Though he and Pagenaud have had time to get to know each other before, Fässler is a new addition to the driving line-up, after Panis' regular team-mate Nicolas Lapierre was cruelly forced out of the race at the eleventh hour with a virus. Whilst he admits he is sorry not to be competing with Lapierre this weekend, the man from near Lyon stresses the revised team has quickly established a strong rapport.

“We're working together really well,” he underlined. “I have a lot of respect for Marcel because he has done a really good job both in the past and at the moment. It's a real shame for Nicolas, because he's my team-mate obviously in the Le Mans Series, and I really hoped for both him and for myself that he'd be here because we have a really good relationship.

“Simon is a really good guy too – he's doing more-or-less the same series in America and he's quick. We're still learning about each other, but I think the ambiance is pretty good and we're looking forward to the weekend.

“What Soheil Ayari [in the sister #5 Oreca] did on qualifying tyres was close to Pescarolo. I respect the Pescarolo team – they have a lot of experience at Le Mans, so even though we've generally been quicker than them in the Le Mans Series I'm not surprised that we're having a big fight with them here.

“The most important thing is the race, for sure. If we have a chance to beat one of the diesel cars it will be good fun, but we need to keep very concentrated to still be there at the end on Sunday. I think if we take the chequered flag we will do so in a good position.

“To be honest, I'm much more confident [about reliability] compared to what I was at the beginning of the season, even before Spa, because we had a lot of problems there. In the test we did afterwards the team worked so well to fix a lot of the problems we had.

“I was really impressed when we came here for the preliminary test, and at Magny-Cours too everything went well and we had none of the problems we'd had at Spa. Everything looks pretty good and I'm quite confident now, but 24 hours is a really long time…”

As to what the future holds for him beyond the race dubbed 'the hardest in the world', Panis admitted he was tempted to make his 'second career' in sportscar racing a long-term endeavour, and he has in the past revealed that he will return to La Sarthe as many times as it takes to succeed.

“I'm thinking about it,” he acknowledged when asked if he intended to remain in sportscars for the foreseeable future, “because I really like the series and I really like the car. In the eight months since it has been in existence the team has done a fantastic job, and the ACO are apparently making a new rule for the future to guarantee better parity between the diesel cars and the petrol cars, which I think will be pretty good for everybody.”

by Russell Atkins at Le Mans

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