by Russell Atkins
TO HEAR THE INTERVIEW IN FULL: CLICK HERE
Olivier Panis has admitted that his drive to return to competitive action in 2008 was prompted by the fact that he ‘missed the steering wheel' – and now he is back, he insists, he is very much gunning for glory.
The experienced Frenchman – who famously triumphed in the Monaco Grand Prix for Ligier in 1996 – was announced at the end of last year to have signed with ORECA-MATMUT to race one of the Provençal outfit's new Courage LMP1 prototypes in the Le Mans Series in 2008, alongside compatriots Nicolas Lapierre, Stéphane Ortelli, Soheil Ayari, Nicolas Prost and Laurent Groppi. It is an opportunity – and a challenge – he is clearly relishing,
“I think this type of car is one of the closest to
Formula 1 to be honest,” Panis underlined in an exclusive interview with
Crash.net Radio, after discovering his new mount for the first time during a 24-hour race-simulated test session at Paul Ricard. “You really feel the downforce, grip and power. For sure it's not
F1, but I think it's the closest you can get. I'm feeling really happy and very confident inside the car.
“I've done more-or-less 60 laps already on the long circuit, and we've improved the car quite a lot set-up wise. The car is looking pretty good and we are going in the right direction.
“We need to continue to work and make improvements because it's still a development car, but we are quite happy and the times are looking quite good. Now I really need to get the maximum experience I can of endurance driving, which is why tonight I think I'm going out at 3am to see how things feel at night in the car, because for me it will be the first time.
“The traffic is a little bit different compared to what I've done before. With the different classes and different speeds of the cars, you need to be very focussed and very confident, because it's very easy to touch another car. It's quite complicated, and that's why I want to get a lot of testing in over the two days.”
![Former 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/416887.jpg)
