Ten minutes with Timo Bernhard

Timo Bernhard, one part of last year's Le Mans-winning Audi trio, admits that coming back to La Sarthe as a winner has changed things for him.

Speaking to AUTOSPORT, the 30-year-old German discussed his evolving role within the team, his relationship with his co-drivers Romain Dumas and Mike Rockenfeller and his chances of making it two from two in the 2011 event.

Q. Coming back this year as a winner, does it feel different than it did before?

Timo Bernhard: Yes. It's quite different. I already felt at the pre-test that now with the #1 on the car, you have for sure a lot more attention, from people, fans and also from the media. Then you have more to do throughout the week. Last year we were I think 'the insiders'. They had us on the list to be contenders for the victory but maybe not the overall favourites. We were more like the jokers in the pack, where if everything went right we could win. In the end we proved we could do it so now a lot more people have us on their radar.

Q. Do you think the balance of power is changing slowly within the team? There was a time when #3 crew of Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Dindo Capello, was the recognised 'fast Audi' but do you think the #1 car is much more of a match now?

TB: I think this year, also like last year, we have a very close driving trio, in all of the three cars and you can see there is hardly a difference. This in the end makes Audi very strong, and it's in the best interests of the team to have all three cars on the same level. This is what we had last year, what we've seen in Spa and what we have here. This is very important. But for sure we have a very strong line-up because Romain and me have driven together for six or seven years, with all those good memories and victories so we came already as a team into Audi. And then to put us together with Rocky [Mike Rockenfeller] is perfect because we know him from his Porsche time. So it fits together. We have the same basic seat, which saves a lot of time in the driver change, the same idea about motorsport which helps a lot with the set-up. We are all still quite young so...

Q. What did you learn in first qualifying?

© LAT

TB: I think the Peugeot really did a qualifying attempt. In the four-hour free practice session we split up the set-up work between the cars. It was important that our car did its work that we were signed on to. This worked out well and we used the four hours perfectly and there was no problem and then in the night practice it was more about doing the qualifying lap that are required and mandatory. And then to check the lights and get into the rhythm in the night. I only did one qualifying lap and then Romain had the incident with the car which he couldn't do anything about. But that meant our session stopped one hour 20 minutes early so for sure that was bad luck. But it's not a big story, we are not out of the rhythm at all.

Q. It used to be that the quick laps would happen at the end of the first session and beginning of the session - at dusk. But now Peugeot seems to wait until night to do it's really quick laps. Can we expect a similar strategy from Audi this year?

TB: The problem is that if you do it at the beginning of the session you have only one lap which you think is clear, if you are right at the beginning of the queue when it goes green. Later on there are more people in the pits and maybe they recorded this and sent the cars out. Towards the end of the session is normally the best time in terms of traffic - and this is the limiting factor in terms of lap time, it's not the darkness.

Q. Do you think that is something that Audi will try tonight then?

TB: We will see. First we have to check everything over again and then we will see. If the time is there and we have ticked everything off our list then we will think about that. But first of all we have to make sure we have a proper car for the race because this is much more important than qualifying.

Q. Tyres were an issue at Spa, in terms of maximising them over a stint in comparison to Peugeot. Do you think you have that licked now, or is it too early to tell?

TB: Spa is a completely different track. We ran the Le Mans aero there - I don't know what Peugeot did - but yesterday the tyres that we used looked very good. We ran a lot of laps on that and it all looked great so I think we are looking quite comfortable for that.