Q & A with Jacques Villeneuve

The Canadian could become the first man to win Le Mans, the Indianapolis 500 and the F1 title since Graham Hill achieved the feat over three decades ago.

However, a lot will depend on how quickly he adjusts to endurance racing, and whether Peugeot can match the dominant Audis in their first year back at La Sarthe with the new diesel-fuelled HDi FAP.

Autosport.com caught up with the Canadian as he prepared for the first qualifying session.

Q. Are you glad that the competitive running is about to start?

Jacques Villeneuve: It feels good. It's a long week, with very little happening. It's good, it's fun with the fans, but we want to get into driving.

Q. How important is qualifying for you?

JV: It's only important so that you don't have traffic on the first laps of the race, and you don't destroy the windshield, that's about it. It's a long race, yes it's important for ego and stuff like that, but I think Nicolas (Minassian) will be doing the qualifying anyway. He's got all the experience here. Frankly, I really don't care about qualifying.

Q. Will you just use qualifying to get more time in the car then?

JV: This is the main test for the night, to see how the tyres evolve. We need to know how many stints we can do at night.

Q. Is the weather a problem, if it is changeable like today?

JV: Yes. If it rains, the rain is always difficult because you have no visibility, but here you have a 45 or 50 miles per hour difference with some cars in different categories, then that can become quite dangerous.

Q. Is the difference in speeds the biggest thing for you to get your head around?

JV: In testing it wasn't a problem, during daytime, but in the wet that might be a little bit crazy. But there have been many races here in the wet, so the key is to be calm enough to survive the 24 hours.

Q. Your car was fifth in the test. If the leaders go flat-out at the start of the race, will you try to go with them?

JV: It depends what we decide before the race, how fragile or not the car is. We'll have a plan, and we'll see if we manage to stick to it.

Q. Is it difficult to adapt to thinking long-term during a race?

JV: No, because oval racing in Indycar was a little bit like that. You had to bide your time. You had to be aggressive at times and then relax at other parts of the race, and that's a little bit like what this kind of racing is.