Peugeot will begin the 2024 season of the FIA World Endurance Championship with the 9X8 that concluded last year.
The House of Lion has worked throughout the winter to try to make its Hypercar more competitive and in the tests carried out various solutions were tried, including the infamous rear wing that had been missing since the beginning of the project.
The Technical Director, Olivier Jansonnie, explained that the operations are also proceeding in these days, so the old car will be brought to the 1812 Km which will be held in Lusail on 1-2 March.
“In recent months we have been focusing on the development of the new car, trying to understand how to proceed with homologation. In Qatar we will race with the 9X8 in 2023 specifications, it will be the same as the one we had in Bahrain, without any new parts”, he said the French engineer during the meeting with journalists organized by the WEC in which Motorsport.com took part.
“We hope to be able to introduce the one with the 2024 specifications at Imola. That is the objective, at the end of March we should be ready with the homologation. The latest tests have however given the answers we wanted”.
Peugeot 9X8 LMH with rear wing
Jansonnie glossed over the question regarding the actual presence of the rear wing, clarifying that the first thing discussed were the tyres, followed by the aerodynamics, now larger at the rear and narrower at the front (29 /34, compared to 31/31 last year).
“We are thinking about most of the changes in relation to the size of the tyres. When making changes you always have to think about how the air is distributed throughout the car and consequently the weight.”
“The initial design was conceived with a different tire size and the distribution was aimed more at the front, so everything is now designed based on the new tire size.”
“Changing it also means understanding how the weights are redistributed and having a new optimal balance of the vehicle, which is the second most important part of the new package. We have to move everything back somehow, have some lighter parts on the car, move it a little of ballast and so on”.
Peugeot 9X8 LMH with rear wing
The transalpine then explained that the approval process requires time also for the 'joker' discussion to be spent.
For a Hypercar approved by the FIA there are 5 tokens to be used in the development in 5 years of homologation, if the innovations introduced serve to increase its performance, while any change that serves in terms of reliability is 'free'.
In the case of the advanced 9X8, the risk of exceeding the available wildcards is high and therefore the technicians of the Satory brand are trying to fall within the permitted ones, avoiding homologating a car from scratch.
“It was impossible to be ready already in February in view of Qatar, in this period we are trying to understand whether we will have to homologate a new car, or re-homologate some parts using the tokens allowed by the regulation”.
“You can't just do half the job, you have to finish it and that takes time, especially when you know you can only use five wild cards; you have to make sure you use them well.”
“This is why we are also carrying out a lot of tests, in order to understand well how the parts work and see if they fit into what could be a so-called homologation Evo-Joker”.
“Obviously we don't want to reveal too many details about what exactly we are doing with the wildcards, but we know that one corresponds to a chapter of the homologation. If you want to change something related to the powertrain you can use a wildcard for the transmission, a wildcard is instead for the engine, and so on”.
“So we are obviously very careful about what we do. We know that we are limited to 5 tokens based on the homologation setup, so we will try to limit the scope to the points that are essential for performance, in our case.”
“In our case it's definitely something related to the performance of the car, so we have to be very careful about refining the details.”
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
#94 Peugeot Totalenergies Peugeot 9X8: Loic Duval, Gustavo Menezes, Nico Mu?ller
Finally Jansonnie spoke about the change of lineups for 2024, with Nico Muller moved to the 9X8 #93 with Jean-Eric Vergne and Mikkel Jensen replacing Paul Di Resta, who will go to the #94 together with Loic Duval and Stoffel Vandoorne.
“We expect the competition to be even tighter from this season onwards and every detail can make the difference. We have looked at the history of the accumulated data and are convinced that something can be optimized in terms of the structures between the various teams”.
“For this reason we exchanged two drivers between the cars, in order to make it easier to find solutions and competitiveness for both.”
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