Hugues de Chaunac Q&A

"I am very pleased because it's the first appearance of the car and we have only had 10 weeks since it was launched in Barcelona. That was a very short time to do everything we wanted with the engine and the chassis settings."



"There was a casting problem on the block from the foundry. It was very important to take the time to fix the problem properly and I'm happy with the results. The engine shows good performance now but it also shows the potential we have in front of us."



"I think we will be much closer to the Audis in one month's time. We are running a low-downforce Le Mans aero package at Donington and Audi is running in higher-downforce spec. We know that the potential to improve the Audi further is not great because they are further along their development curve than us. But I believe we have a lot more potential than them."



"We want to be still running at the end of the race, but we have to remind ourselves that we have to be ready to win in 2002. For that we need to finish this year, and I hope we will be in the top five. Time is short and we are working with a smaller budget than Audi. We have a lot of support from Chrysler. We are still a semi-works team with a smaller budget, but the same level of motivation. We are like a small commando unit but we are facing a whole army in the Audi team. But commandos are very strong and can fight well even against greater odds."



"I don't care too much about our performance at pre-qualifying. For us it's a working day where we have to learn as much as possible about the car and to see how we can improve it for the race. We will just try to get as good a car as possible for the 24 hours."