In his latest exclusive column for Crash.net, former Monaco Grand Prix winner turned sportscar star Olivier Panis gives us the inside line on Oreca’s 2008 campaign to-date, and explains why – with just a tiny tweak of the regulations in the Le Mans Series – he would be happy to see his new venture develop into a long-term ‘second career’ post Formula 1...
For sure the first race of the Le Mans Series in Barcelona was a really good start, because we saw the car was quite competitive compared to other cars using the same engine as us, like Pescarolo. I think that was good news at the beginning, and we did quite well. We had some reliability problems – which was normal because we started the programme quite late – but I was impressed by the team’s work over the winter time to get the car ready in just three months.
Our pace was very encouraging, because I followed Alex Prémat quite closely for the first stint; it was a bit of a surprise to follow an Audi in the first race, but we were very happy about it. For sure the diesel engines in the Audis and Peugeots were a lot more competitive than us, but these are the rules and we need to accept them, and overall we were really happy about the performance of the car in the first race.
After that, Monza was a very tough race for the team. My team-mate Nicolas Lapierre and I qualified quite well again and we had good pace, but we had a gearbox problem which forced us to retire. That was a pain, for sure, for the team, but compared to Stéphane Ortelli’s accident it was nothing really. When I saw the accident I was really scared for him, and the car was destroyed completely just a month before Le Mans. That was really tough, but the important thing was that – aside from a pain in his ankle – Stéphane was okay. That was the best news at the end of the weekend, to be honest.
![Former Monaco Grand Prix winner Olivier Panis making his sportscar bow with the ORECA-MATMUT team at Paul Ricard in early 2008 [pic credit: DPPI]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/416889.jpg)
