Peugeot: COTA Result “Shows We Can Fight on a Regular Basis”

Peugeot Sport technical director Olivier Jansonnie said the brand’s strong finish in the FIA World Endurance Championship round at Circuit of The Americas “showed that we can now fight on a regular basis” after its two cars battled through the challenging conditions to finish third and fourth.

Loic Duval, Malthe Jakobsen and Stoffel Vandoorne captured the final overall podium position at the end of the six-hour Lone Star Le Mans event, with the sister Peugeot 9X8 of Mikkel Jensen, Jean-Eric Vergne and Paul Di Resta one place further back.

This marked Peugeot’s best result of the season thus far, while it also took its first podium finish since last year’s 8 Hours of Bahrain finale.

Speaking after the race, Jansonnie identified that a largely mistake-free run was key to Peugeot’s strong finish in Texas.

“Overall, we made no mistakes, which was the most important,” Jansonnie said. “And I have to say, I’m quite happy with the way the drivers have been through that race as well.

“At some point we tried to run very, very low pressures and it was hard for them to keep the car on the track with those conditions.

“This was probably the key of our position in the end. We wanted them to try to survive and stay on the track, which they did very well.

“In comparison to the other drivers and the other teams, we made less mistakes.”

Notably, Jansonnie also hinted that knowledge Peugeot gained in testing during the off season also helped the brand work its way through the difficult conditions.

“Somehow we were a bit unlucky last winter with the testing we did, with testing in the wet conditions when we were expecting dry weather,” he said.

“But at the end of the day, it just helped us today because we accumulated some knowledge at the time, which was, I think, what was quite important in the final result.”

He also pointed out the significance of the result, which came after Peugeot already had an encouraging display in Brazil but failed to convert that to a top-five finish.

“For sure we came close very often,” Jansonnie said. “In Brazil we could have done a little bit better. Sometimes you just need to wait until everything aligns perfectly, which we did for us today, almost.

“We had hoped to keep second place in the end, but the Ferrari was much faster, so nothing to regret there.

“Very happy with the result, very happy with the way the team behaved and what we managed to recover from our qualifying.

“I think we showed that we can fight now on a regular basis.

“The top two cars were still very fast and frankly untouchable, but still, we are there, and we’re trying to be there on every race in this kind of position, and at some point, it will for sure happen.”