WEC | Peugeot doesn’t give up: “Podium objective, we know what to do”

At Peugeot Sport there is absolutely no desire to throw in the towel, even though the results to date have continued to be unsatisfactory since the Lion returned to action in the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship.

The 2024 version of the 9X8 has not yet brought anything positive in the outings at Imola, Spa-Francorchamps and Le Mans; while it must certainly be said that the Balance of Performance assigned to it so far has certainly not been advantageous, it is also true that the greatest disappointment came in the home 24 hours.

The Top 10 just missed by the two French Hypercars was much less than one might have expected, but from this point of view the race in Sarthe provided a lot of data and ideas on which the French will now focus their work.

“We need to work on performance, looking at the GPS data from Le Mans we understood where we are strong and where we are weak, so these are the areas we will have to work on,” Technical Director Olivier Jansonnie explained to journalists in Sao Paulo, including Motorsport.com.

“There is still a lot to learn in terms of set-up. We started running the car in December and it is completely different to the old one. Interestingly, at Le Mans, the areas where we were weak were the ones where the old car was quite strong, and vice versa.”

“Over the winter we focused on reliability and fixing all the issues we had initially in previous years, which seems to have worked. Now we need to spend more time on performance.”

“Until now we have tried to give more confidence to the drivers, so that they can push a little bit more. The expectation now is to show more and more performance in the remaining races of this season.”

“We won’t be fighting for the top positions in the championship, also because for us it’s already gone, but we still have four races to demonstrate our performance and we are really doing everything we can. The goal is to get close to the podium by the end of the season, for sure.”

This weekend there is the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo to tackle in Brazil, then a similarly long race in Austin on September 1, followed by the similar one in Fuji, before closing out the year with the 8 Hours of Bahrain in November.

At the end of July there will be a two-day collective test in Texas, also to test the 2025 Michelin tires, but Peugeot’s work will not stop at that test because the program is much broader, as Jansonnie reveals.

“The program now shifts the balance a little bit from what we have done up to now. At Le Mans we absolutely had to guarantee reliability, but these 6-hour races are certainly not easier, even if they are simpler than Le Mans.”

“Our focus on testing will be different. It’s easier to do one thing rather than two things at the same time, with performance and reliability being the focus.”

“With the sporting regulations you have to balance the amount of testing we do before and after Le Mans. Everyone wants to do as much as possible before Le Mans to try to gain experience, whereas usually we have less afterwards, but more time to prepare everything.”

“We will take part in the tests organised at the Circuit of The Americas and then do some more after Fuji, before heading to Bahrain in November for the grand finale of the season.”