Duval Doubts Peugeot’s Spa Speed Will Translate to Le Mans

Loic Duval admits he is “not convinced” that Peugeot will be able to replicate its strong performance in last month’s FIA World Endurance Championship round at Spa in next weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Peugeot enjoyed its strongest outing to date with the current iteration of the 9X8 in Belgium, where both its cars were in the mix for top-five finishes.

However, the No. 94 car that Duval shares with Loic Duval and Malthe Jakobsen was forced to retire when contact between Jakobsen and Robin Frijns’ BMW caused terminal suspension damage, while the sister No. 93 Peugeot failed to score after a strategic blunder that technical director Oliver Jansonnie described as “irritating”.

While he said that Spa was an important motivation boost for Peugeot, Duval doesn’t think it is realistic to expect such a strong showing again from the 9X8 in terms of pure pace at the Circuit de la Sarthe next week.

“We are happy for sure with the pace we had at Spa,” Duval told Sportscar365. “It was really cool for everybody to be in the game, especially the drivers. We know also in the championship a lot of things can happen from one weekend to the other.

“I am not convinced we will have the same pace here that we had at Spa. But if we do things correctly, we can still manage to have a good result.

“It was a lot of fun at Spa, it was good to pump everybody up, but now we have to start again from scratch.”

Peugeot enjoyed a favorable Balance of Performance at Spa, running at the mandated minimum weight of 1030 kg and the maximum power of 520kW.

However, in the BoP for Le Mans, the 9X8 is the least powerful car below the Power Gain threshold at 507kW, while its weight of 1039 kg puts it level with BMW and Alpine, and heavier than Cadillac (1037 kg) and Aston Martin (1030 kg).

“I would love to have the same pace [as we had at Spa], but frankly speaking I don’t think we will have,” continued Duval. “To have the pace to overtake a Toyota or a Ferrari, I don’t think we’ll be able to do that here honestly in terms of pure speed.

“We have other strengths we have to use: strategy, being consistent in whatever conditions you have: cold, hot, night, day, wet, all those things.

“They also resurfaced a bit of the track, and one of the reasons we were good at Spa was because we had a smoother track [due to the recent partial resurfacing].

“There is still a bit of an unknown, but we’ll see what we get.”

Vandoorne meanwhile described Peugeot’s Spa performance as “promising” and is hoping that the French marque’s greater experience of the 9X8 in its 2024 guise will help compared to last year’s Le Mans.

The current version of the 9X8 was introduced at Imola last year, meaning Peugeot went into last year’s WEC blue riband with only two races under its belt with the car.

“We have a lot more experience of the car and where to put it,” Vandoorne told Sportscar365. “I feel like we’ll be in a happier place with the car set-up, as we have evolved a lot since last year. Hopefully that will put us in the mix a bit more this year.

“I hope we can fight for the top five again, but Le Mans is tricky, you have to survive, you have to be there at the end and take the opportunity. Anything can happen.”

Vandoorne also admitted the pressure is on Peugeot as the three-year anniversary of the beginning of the 9X8 program looms.

“Of course we want to deliver and we need to deliver,” he said. “We need a good result soon, let’s say. There’s never a bad time for that.

“We have prepared as much as we can and that’s the only thing we can do.”