Peugeot Still “Working Hard to Understand” Le Mans Struggles

Peugeot Hypercar team boss Emmanuel Esnault says the manufacturer is still working to fully understand why it was so far off the pace in the 24 Hours of Le Mans earlier this year.

The Peugeot 9X8 went from taking pole position at the previous FIA World Endurance Championship event at Spa with Malthe Jakobsen to neither car progressing to the Hyperpole shootouts at Le Mans, with their best lap being 1.8 seconds off the ultimate pace in the opening qualifying session.

Those struggles transferred to the race where the Peugeots finished 11th and 12th, towards the rear of the Hypercar ranks and ending up four and five laps behind the leaders.

Even though Peugeot enjoyed better single-lap pace at the following round in Sao Paulo, with Jakobsen able to qualify the No. 94 machine eighth, both 9X8s struggled more in the race and again finished outside of the top-ten.

Esnault said they’re still trying to explain the Le Mans misery and hinted that the problems extended beyond just any unfavorable Balance of Performance parameters.

“Le Mans obviously was a big disappointment, as you can imagine, for us for our home race,” he told Sportscar365.

“We’re working really hard to understand exactly the lack of performance on some areas because there were some areas that obviously we could explain but some others need a deeper analysis.

“So, even if it’s something that’s behind us it’s something we want to fully understand in order to move forward, to build up for our knowledge and to build 2027 and beyond based on that.”

Esnault explained that this analysis was an ongoing process and that it “takes time” complicated by the first flyaway WEC event of the season in Brazil following just a few weeks after Le Mans.

“When you have on top of that a racing season to continue, we have to manage it in a clever way in terms of engineering bandwidth,” he said.

Peugeot is set to introduce a revised car for next season, and began testing potential upgrades at Paul Ricard at the end of last month.

It intends to use additional performance jokers rather than designing a completely new machine, subject to getting approval from series organizers on the grounds of its deficit to the benchmark pace.

“We are committed to FIA WEC and we have some ambitions obviously because we need to deliver and need to get some results for the brand and there’s so much energy deployed,” Esnault said of Peugeot’s future. “It’s an investment and we will continue to push.”

In the meantime, Esnault says the manufacturer “won’t give up” and is still targeting some strong results from the second half of the 2026 campaign.

“It’s tough but that’s racing — you have to take the hits and move forward,” he added. “The team is fully focused, drivers are still fully focused and we will do our best with what we have.

“We definitely have to do some good stuff and extract some results with the package we have.”

Jakobsen, who has been linked with a possible move away from Peugeot next year to Hypercar newcomer McLaren, echoed Esnault’s desire to keep pushing over the remainder of this season.

He described the Brazilian event as “definitely a step forward from everyone” by adding: “We have to be professional enough to clean our heads and try to forget a little bit about that [Le Mans] weekend and try to take the positives away.”

Jakobsen felt the series’ current summer break until September can act as a reset and “motivate people to dig a little bit deeper” for the second half of the campaign.

“Hopefully after holidays refreshing the bodies and minds of everyone we can arrive strong for the end of the season,” he said.