Aston Martin's Anthony Davidson declared himself optimistic for Saturday's race, despite enduring a frustrating final qualifying session.
"I think we could easily do a 3m26s but the traffic is unbelievable," he told AUTOSPORT. "I haven't had a clear lap all night. They call it qualifying but it's crazy; it's more like practice."
Davidson and his teammates, Darren Turner and Jos Verstappen, will start ninth on the grid after Davidson set the car's best lap of 3m27.704s in Thursday night's final qualifying session.
"Every lap you have to weave in and out of the slower cars," said Davidson. "If you catch one in the Porsche Curves, you're screwed. But I've got a good feeling because I followed one of the Audis for a while and the only place he pulled away from me was through the Porsche Curves. Everywhere else it wasn't hard to keep up -- and that was while we were on race pace.
"So with that in mind, I'm quite positive about the race. If we run through to the end without problems, we will finish on the podium."