“It's slightly unexpected in the way that it happened,” he confessed, “because we didn't expect the Peugeot to be quite so fast. On the other side of it, we didn't expect us to have the fantastically clean run that we did – and that we had in '07 until the wheel fell off…
“Everything ran like clockwork and the car was fantastically reliable – all we did was put diesel into it and tyres on it and off we went. It was very good in the wet and the dry – we had excellent balance there – and the pit-stops were superb; I think we spent less time in the pits than anyone else, and that's how you win this race, especially when you don't necessarily have the fastest car over one lap.
“There were a few turning-points; [the advent of the rain in the early morning hours] was the main one, no question about it, in terms of the lead battle. When the reliability issues started to afflict the Peugeot, we then knew we were pushing them further than they wanted to go.
“When it rained, we had seen in the pre-test that we were more competitive in the wet, and we were able to take some advantage there. I didn't quite expect to get the three-minute advantage that we finally had, but when the opportunity was presented to us we very gladly took it, I can tell you!
“That was really the turning-point, because they were really on the back foot after that. They had to take the risks; they were the ones who had to throw everything at it; they were the ones that had to make tyre choices that were maybe not quite ideal for what they wanted to do, certainly not on the safety side – and we were the ones that could counteract them.
“Okay, we still had to drive flat-out to make sure that they didn't catch us up, but certainly the ball was more in our court than in theirs' after that. It's definitely easier leading with a three-minute gap than being behind and having a car in front of you going away at four seconds a lap!
