Le Mans is such a great race because you can never do anything alone. You have to work as a team member. And being a team member makes you a better person.
I never had any financial support or sponsors, and so I always had to, at every level, prove myself the hard way. I was five years in Japan before I got my debut at Le Mans. And I think this is a humble way to get through as a racing driver.
Any finish at Le Mans is great but every time I go to Le Mans my mission is to win.
Le Mans takes the best out of everyone. Winning is important but it's not everything. It's such a big and great event in motorsport. You do more kilometres in that one race than Formula One do in a season, and probably a higher average speed. We average about 220km/h including pit stops and cover nearly 5000km.
Yes, with Le Mans, obviously, the approach needs to be different. You have a race only once a year, so in the whole focus, the whole energy, you know that you cannot change the world and have a race two weeks later.
I don't see myself racing at 50 years old. I enjoy racing, and that has been my whole life. But one day I will take time to look at other things. I know that everything has an end date, even life, and I also have a family and there are other things to enjoy than trying to be first into the corner and fastest out.
The trick at Le Mans is to get the car 'in the window.' Everything is critical: the tyre pressure, the brake temperature, and that means you have to push the car a lot to get it into the window - it's about getting everything to work right and getting the car to flow through the corners.
