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Peugeot Envisioned “Nice Fight” With Alpine for Third Until Issue

Loose plug prevents Peugeot from challenging for maiden WEC podium in second race…

Photo: Jose Bispo

Peugeot’s FIA World Endurance Championship technical director felt the French manufacturer “could have had a nice fight” with Alpine for a podium result at the 6 Hours of Fuji had its best-placed car not encountered a mechanical issue.

The No. 94 Peugeot 9X8 driven by James Rossiter, Loic Duval and Gustavo Menezes had a strong start to Sunday’s race and managed to jump ahead of the No. 36 Alpine A480 Gibson for third at the opening round of Hypercar pit stops.

Rossiter kept Andre Negrao at bay during the second stint before the LMP1-spec Alpine moved back ahead of the hybrid-powered Peugeot under the next pit cycle.

Shortly after that, Duval returned the No. 94 Peugeot to its garage with smoke pouring out from the rear.

The same issue later struck the further back No. 93 Peugeot, leaving Alpine free to complete the podium behind the pair of Toyota GR010 Hybrids.

“I think we could have had a nice fight,” said Peugeot’s technical chief Olivier Jansonnie.

“The pace before this issue was good. At the end of the race, pace was always good for us. The positions were pretty much clear so it wasn’t a fight at the end.

“It’s a very good step for us, definitely.

“If you look at the way we operated the race, in the first two hours we tried to operate the race properly with strategy which we couldn’t do at all in Monza. It’s a massive step forward for us.”

Jansonnie added that Peugeot was satisfied with its lap time performance at Fuji.

While it didn’t join the other Hypercar machinery in the high 1m 30s bracket, the fastest lap of each car was a 1:31.1 which put the slowest Peugeot 0.447 seconds off the quickest Toyota.

“I think the pace compared to the Alpine was good,” Jansonnie reckoned.

“The race pace was actually really good; we’re still missing a little bit. But it’s part of the things we had to learn on that track, which is quite specific on the tire.

“We also found out during the race that our competition had a different tire strategy. It’s something we have to get more experience at.

“When you’ve been on this track several times before, you have some sort of advantage.”

The problem that temporarily sent the Peugeots to their pit garages, and effectively denied the manufacturer a podium, was an oil leak that was caused by a loose plug.

Having seen the issue take hold of the No. 94 car, Peugeot’s mechanics were able to turn the No. 93 machine around faster. This enabled the No. 93 car to finish ahead of the No. 94, courtesy of it losing eight laps fewer than its teammate.

The No. 93 car had a rocky start to the race as Jean-Eric Vergne struggled with his tires and fell away from Rossiter, while Peugeot is set to investigate the cause.

“As far as we know, it’s the same problem,” Jansonnie said regarding the oil leaks.

“Now we need to go deeper into the analysis and try to make sure we understand [it] completely. It’s nothing dramatic, but the consequences are quite big.

“We knew it was probably something on the car that we couldn’t see in tests, and that can happen. When you have some mechanical issue, you know it can happen [again].

“The two cars are built the same; they have the same design.

“We didn’t have the problems [that were encountered] in Monza. That was one of the targets of this weekend; to make sure we cured those issues.

“We have a new one now, but at least we moved forward on the ones we had at Monza.”

Daniel Lloyd is a UK-based reporter for Sportscar365, covering the FIA World Endurance Championship, Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, among other series.

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