Piccini confident of Aston victory

The British marque held a slight speed advantage last year, but their rivals Corvette Racing took first and second place thanks to better reliability and pit work.

Piccini, whose teammate Tomas Enge put their DBR9 No. 007 on pole in the GT1 class in front of the sister No. 009 car, believes the team have improved and are now ready to win.

"The team are aiming to win as the car is competitive," the Italian told autosport.com. "We have what it takes to do it. The Corvettes have always demonstrated to be a bit more reliable, while Aston has had a few more problems in the past, but with the tests we've done we haven't had any troubles.

"The car is fully sorted, so we're definitely going for victory," he added.

The 27-year-old sportscar driver, who is at his first attempt at the historic 24-hour race, describes the track as difficult to master, especially in poor conditions, he himself spinning into the gravel in Wednesday night's wet qualifying.

"The track is very nice. It's certainly difficult to learn because it's very long, it has many strange turns and you can't make mistakes because there are no run-off areas. As long as it's dry it's - let's say - a normal circuit, but when it rains like on Wednesday night it's a tragedy.

"The straights, which are usually easy on any track, here are difficult in the dry too, because the lorries cause bumps on the asphalt so at the beginning you need to find a way around them; when it rains these become puddles - unbelievable pools - so it gets really hard.

"On top of that at night it often gets foggy so it's pretty interesting."