Peugeot’s First Podium a “Big Thing” But More Pace to Find

Peugeot’s FIA World Endurance Championship technical director said it was a “big thing” for the team to claim its first Hypercar podium but acknowledged that more pace must be found to make further progress.

Jean-Eric Vergne, Mikkel Jensen and Paul Di Resta delivered the Peugeot 9X8’s best result to date in the 6 Hours of Monza, finishing third behind fellow LMH manufacturers Ferrari and Toyota.

Technical chief Olivier Jansonnie told reporters that the outcome serves as a boost to the team after reliability issues impacted its early WEC appearances.

The first podium came 12 months after Peugeot’s Hypercar debut at Monza last season.

“For us, it’s a big thing,” he said. “It’s been one year we’ve been racing now and we had a lot of disappointment at the beginning of the program.

“So achieving third place here… when we talked some days ago, I said a podium was actually possible. Now it became real, so it’s a big thing for the team, for sure.

“I think it was a good day. The pace at the start of the race is as we had hoped from the Free Practices. I think it’s quite logical and deserved.

“It’s a very good race for No. 93, but a shame for No. 94. Showing us still that reliability is the key and we need to work on that.”

Jansonnie felt that the No. 93 Peugeot was more competitive in the earlier stages of the Monza race when track temperatures were cooler and suggested that it was “less competitive” compared to the Toyota GR010 Hybrid and the Ferrari 499P later on.

“When you’re not in the leading pack anymore, the pace is difficult to analyze,” he said.

“At the start of the race, the pace was there. But we could see the competitors still have a bit more pace at the end of the race.”

He added: “Since the beginning of the weekend, we have much more pace than the previous races.

“We knew from Free Practice that our stints in the race would be pretty good. We knew as well that the survival with the tires would be the key of the race.

“There were different strategies among the manufacturers and cars. It was not so bad: it was at least suiting our cars. We did some mixed choices to start, and I think they were pretty close.”

When asked if Peugeot feels it is capable of taking a victory at the 6 Hours of Fuji or the 8 Hours of Bahrain this season, Jansonnie responded: “We are still missing a bit of pace.

“I think everybody was pushing at the time, and we were pushing as well, but we are still not as fast as the others. That’s what is missing.

“We still have to work on the speed of the car.”

The No. 93 Peugeot took the lead in the opening hour of the race when Jensen passed the No. 50 Ferrari of Miguel Molina and the No. 7 Toyota of Mike Conway into Rettifilio.

However, the Danish driver lost the position when a slow first pit stop cost his car around 20 seconds in the pits compared to its rivals.

Jansonnie suggested that the slow stop reminded the team of another area in which it can make further improvements.

“We need to analyze exactly what has happened,” he said.

“There was an LMP2 car coming into the pit lane at the same time. Therefore, we were not completely ready and in position. We didn’t stop the car in the right place and we had to push it back.

“It still made a difference because it put us out of the leading pack.

“It shows us that if you want to reach this kind of position on a regular basis, you need to do absolutely no mistakes in the race. There, we did one.

“It tells us that we’ve improved, clearly, but there are still things to work on.”

The lengthy garage visit for the No. 94 car driven by Gustavo Menezes, Loic Duval and Nico Mueller was caused by a problem with the car’s gearshift actuator system.

Peugeot replaced the actuator and the car continued to reach the checkered flag in 19th overall, nine laps down on the winning No. 7 Toyota.

It came after the manufacturer introduced hydraulic gearshift actuation at the second round of the season in Portugal, having previously encountered poor reliability with electronic actuators.