Pourchaire “Starting Second Part of My Career” with Peugeot

Photo: Julien Delfosse/DPPI

New Peugeot FIA World Endurance Championship driver Theo Pourchaire has described his series debut this weekend in Bahrain as the “start of the second part of my career.”

Pourchaire was a highly-rated single-seater prospect, winning the 2023 FIA Formula 2 title, but was never able to make the progression to Formula 1 – despite being a Sauber reserve – while a subsequent move to the NTT IndyCar Series proved brief.

The Frenchman switched to sports cars for this season, tackling the European Le Mans Series with Algarve Pro Racing and finishing seventh in the LMP2 standings with one podium.

He has also served as Peugeot’s test and reserve driver for the WEC and was promoted to a race seat for the Bahrain event ahead of a full season in the 9X8 next year.

After years of uncertainty around the future direction of his career, Pourchaire is now relishing the prospect of being a factory driver.

“For me it’s the first big opportunity in my career,” he said. “Since my Formula 2 title, I think I was very unlucky and I deserved a bit better opportunities but it’s part of life.

“It can be in sport or life in general there’s ups and downs and, right now, I start the second part of my career. I’m professional, I represent a car brand and I’m driving in a world championship, so really happy.”

Despite his Peugeot deal, Pourchaire did not rule out a potential return to single-seaters in the future and has conducted FIA Formula E testing with Maserati this year.

“The thing is I’m only 22 years old, which is still young for motorsport,” he explained. “Endurance I think is the place to be right now because of all the manufacturers and my dream is to win Le Mans. As a French driver with Peugeot, that would be my dream.”

Ahead of his WEC bow, Pourchaire has described his ELMS campaign as a very useful learning experience to help him understand the “endurance racing tricks,” such as traffic management and completing driver changes.

Pourchaire is already fully integrated into the Peugeot setup and first experienced the 9X8 at the end of last season in the Bahrain rookie test.

He has since completed an intensive endurance test at Paul Ricard as well as outings at Portimao and the Circuit of The Americas during this year.

“This team is a like a family to me because I know most people very well and they’re French as well, so communication is easy,” he said.

“I had the chance to join them in Sao Paulo for the race weekend to be in the debrief with the engineers, with the drivers and do the track walks and work with the team, so that was really important.”

Pourchaire hasn’t set any specific targets for his WEC debut, but wants to help Peugeot in its close fight for fifth in the manufacturers’ championship, with it currently trailing Alpine by 11 points.

“For me, it’s more a weekend of preparation for next year – that’s the main goal,” he added. “But I’m a competitor, so my dream is to be on the podium.”