Despite a difficult race and no points at Silverstone, Loic draws conclusions from the first weekend of the WEC.

Loic, how would you sum the first round of the WEC at Silverstone? “There’s no use hiding the fact that in terms of points it wasn’t very good. The car didn’t finish the race so we came away empty-handed and our rivals have opened up a lead. Honestly, though, I don’t think that’s the most important thing. We had a lot of things to validate this weekend and we’ve gathered a lot of data for the races to come. First of all, our car’s quick; we missed pole by only 0.005sec. And our driver line-up of Tom, Lucas and myself is starting to gel really well. I feel good vibrations for the next rounds.”

The conditions during the weekend were particularly tricky, weren’t they? “Yes. But having to cope with rain at Silverstone isn’t really a surprise. On the other hand, its intensity and frequency, the way it stopped and then started again was a real headache; above all in a 6-hour race. We trusted our radar information and we stayed out on slicks, which made the car very difficult to drive on the limit. Other teams made other choices. This being said, at the time it wasn’t easy to take the right decision. You learn from every race.”

Does the new Audi come up to your expectations?“What I’d like to say first of all is that modifying the regulations had become absolutely indispensable. We’ve tried to comply with them as quickly as possible, and even if the colours of the car correspond to what the fans are familiar with, what’s under the bonnet is completely different. In this area I’d like to take off my hat to the Ingolstadt engineers: once again they’ve designed a real little jewel. We couldn’t prove it on Sunday, but we’ll do so in the near future. Our rivals had better watch out!”

Next race: FIA WEC 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps - 3rd May 2014.