Despite a scare against Wales, Bernard Laporte's men have cruised through the tournament so far, and Lewsey believes they are capable of upping their game when the World Champions visit.

The stage is set for a bone-crunching heavyweight confrontation between European rugbys principal warriors.

England must win by a minimum seven points and stay ahead of France on try-count - or eight points and above to be certain - otherwise a successful defence of their RBS 6 Nations crown will disappear into the Parisian night sky.

Lewsey and company are determined to spoil the French party, but a team already beaten at home by Ireland this season and that struggled for long periods against Wales, must belatedly hit top form.

I am hoping that France dont get out of first gear, and they stall, to be honest, but I dont think they will, said Wasps wing Lewsey, who will make his first appearance at Stade de France.

I think they have played this tournament with something in reserve, and I think they are ready to let all cylinders loose and let the engine fully go at us.

But we have been there before. We have played France before in big games, like the World Cup semi-final - they were the favourites again then. We need to play heads-up rugby, play what we see and adapt to the situation accordingly.

We have got the ability to do that, but on an individual level we have got to look at ourselves and realise that we have got to come off the field knowing that we could not have thrown anything more at them, he added.

We are fully aware that we have spluttered somewhat with our performances in this championship, but it was nice to get back to winning ways against Wales.

We need to align the physicality and dogged-mindedness we showed against Wales with some guile and performance.

France are on fire in this tournament, but this England team is very experienced, has been there and won some very important internationals through gritting it out and thinking correctly under pressure.

There is a no blame culture with this squad and, as a result of that, if someone makes an individual error, then we take it collectively as a team fault. That is why it hurts so much that we have conceded three tries in the last two games, which for us, is below standard.

We need to put that right, and in terms of the attack, we need to make slightly fewer unforced errors so we can actually establish some pattern on the game."