Peugeot Targets ‘Getting Closer to Podium’ for Rest of Season

Peugeot has set itself the target of ‘getting closer to the podium’ for the remainder of the FIA World Endurance Championship season as it turns its focus more towards performance following the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Since introducing the revised version of the 9X8 for the second round of the season at Imola, Peugeot has struggled for raw performance against its competitors in the Hypercar class.

Last month’s blue riband round at Le Mans was a particular disappointment for the French marque as its two cars ended up 11th and 12th, losing out to Lamborghini in the battle for the final place in the points.

Technical director Olivier Jansonnie said that Peugeot has had the chance to review its performance at Le Mans and now has a better understanding of its strong and weak points, as it aims to close the gap to the pacesetters in the Hypercar category starting with this weekend’s 6 Hours of Sao Paulo.

“We have to work on performance,” Jansonnie told reporters in Sao Paulo. “We can see the GPS traces [from Le Mans], so we can see where we are strong and where we are weak, so they are the areas we need to work on. 

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

“We really focused during the winter on reliability and on curing all the issues we had initially during the previous years, which seems somehow to have worked. Now we need to spend more time working on performance.

“The expectations now are to display more and more performance for the remaining races this season.

“We won’t be fighting for the top positions in the championship, this is gone for us, but we still have four races to show performance and we are really pushing to do this.

“The target is to get closer to podiums by the end of the season, for sure.”

Jansonnie added that, with Le Mans out of the way, the impetus for Peugeot to focus on reliability instead of performance in testing has now been reduced.

“It moves a bit the centre of gravity of what we are doing,” he said. “At Le Mans, you must absolutely deliver reliability, but these six-hour races, they are not easy but they are easier than Le Mans.

“The focus we are putting on testing will be different. It’s easier to run after just one thing instead of doing two at the same time with performance and reliability.”

Jansonnie revealed that Peugeot will have the chance to test at the Circuit of The Americas ahead of next month’s sixth round of the season at the Texan venue, and will also conduct more testing following the Fuji round in September.

“With the sporting regulations you have to balance the amount of testing we do before Le Mans and after Le Mans,” he explained.

“Everyone wants to do as much testing as possible before Le Mans to try and build some experience, normally we have less testing [after] and more time to prepare everything.”