Jakobsen: “Very Difficult” for Peugeot to Fight for Podium

Surprise pole position contender Malthe Jakobsen has admitted it will be “very difficult” for Peugeot to challenge for a podium in the season-opening 6 Hours of Imola FIA World Endurance Championship race, despite his strong qualifying performance.

Jakobsen qualified fourth in the No. 94 Peugeot 9X8 Hypercar, just 0.073 seconds away from Antonio Giovinazzi’s pole time in the No. 51 Ferrari 499P and outqualified one of the Ferraris and one of the Toyota TR010 Hybrids.

However, despite Jakobsen saying the French manufacturer had spent practice concentrating on race pace, he reckons it will be difficult for Peugeot to challenge for the podium.

“We always have to be optimistic,” said Jakobsen when asked about podium prospects. “You never want to give up and say definitely it’s a no.

“I will say it’s going to be very difficult and we’re going to have some work on our side.

“Loic [Duval] will take the start and he’s got massive experience and for sure will be sharp and ready from the beginning when we pass the green light.

“It’s going to be very difficult with tire degradation but maybe some rain could spice it up for us and play in our favor.”

Some weather forecasts have suggested rain could arrive at Imola in the closing stages of the race, leaving teams with plenty of uncertainty about strategy.

Regardless of the race result, Jakobsen said it was “horrible” for Peugeot to have been so close to pole but ultimately miss out, especially when it had only used the Soft compound Michelin tires for the first time in Hyperpole.

“It was a bit of a surprise to be that close in Hyperpole especially considering we always did the quali sims in free practice on Mediums and made that choice to make it into Hyperpole and that was our goal for today,” he said.

“I’m very proud and very happy for everybody in the team to have a bit of success here in qualifying but still a little bit frustrated when you can see the pole is right in front of you that we didn’t quite make it.

“But overall very happy, especially for this track it’s one of the key points of the season to have a strong quali because it’s going to be very difficult to overtake.”

Jakobsen explained the strategy to prioritize running on the Mediums during practice was to concentrate on the race and said it was difficult to know if that choice had cost Peugeot the vital tenth it needed to claim pole.

“In practice we also looked at the bigger picture in preparing for the race and running the Soft tires, if you’re going to end up with some kind of high degradation, you’re kind of stuck with preparing for quali and you’re a bit on the back foot for the race,” he said.

While Jakobsen will start fourth, the sister No. 93 Peugeot 9X8 languished down in 15th with Stoffel Vandoorne unable to replicate his stablemate’s pace.

“A difficult qualifying for us,” said Vandoorne. “Since FP1, the No. 93 has been lacking a bit of pace compared to the No. 94, which did a great job. We’ll work to understand why and try to improve things for tomorrow.”

Jamie Klein contributed to this report