Nico Müller: “The pace was pretty good”

Nico, what are your feelings after these 6 Hours of Imola?

I’m pretty happy, I think we ran a pretty good race with what we had available to be honest. There was a problem in my first stint which cost us 30-35 seconds, I had to do a complete reset of the car, I don’t know yet what exactly happened (the Swiss was stuck on 2^e report. Editor’s note). The engineers are still looking at this, we need to understand what happened. Otherwise, the car ran without problems and the feeling was quite good during the first two stints. The pace was quite good, I felt quite comfortable with the balance I had, and the tools in the car to keep it in the best condition. Then it got complicated with the weather, we had to stay clean, not make mistakes, and I think we made the right strategic decisions. Overall, I think we can be satisfied with these 2 points and the debut of the new 9X8.

Is there any disappointment with the level of performance?

In a way, yes, because when you compete, you always want to be at the top, and we showed that we can fight at the front in Qatar (thanks to a caring BoP. Editor’s note). Here we were hoping to be closer at the start of the weekend. We know that we still have some learning to do with the new car, and that coming here without ever having tested it was going to be a bigger challenge than for others who know the circuit by heart. We didn’t expect to beat everyone from the start, but being a little closer to the others would have been nice.

Is it easier to move in traffic than the old one?

The first sensations are that it’s a little easier, yes, we have to look at the data in detail to see the loss of time in traffic compared to our opponents. This circuit is also quite extreme in terms of traffic, it can reward you when you take a lot of risks, but it can also end badly very quickly. The car seems to be a little less affected in traffic, so first impressions are that we have made improvements in this area as well.

Did you learn a lot?

Even if you do a six-hour race, the weekend seems very short! The 60 or 90 minute test sessions go by in the blink of an eye and we say to ourselves that we would have done more laps! Overall it was a very important experience, I’m quite happy, it was a valuable weekend.

Without the rain, was it difficult to finish in the points?

I think after my double stint we were flirting with the top 10. Then it was harder to come back, mainly because the further back you go, the more competitive cars you find yourself against. We clearly took advantage of other people’s mistakes, mistakes we didn’t make, but that’s part of the game, right?

Is this a useful weekend for Spa and especially Le Mans?

Clearly useful, yes. Rain is one thing, but transition phases are something you try to avoid when testing, because that’s when the risks increase! When you do long testing sessions, you don’t want to risk breaking the car, but in racing, you have to go through that. It was good to experience this situation.