Peugeot: ‘Very Different’ Method One Year After New 9X8 Debut

Photo: Julien Delfosse/DPPI

Peugeot’s approach to this weekend’s 6 Hours of Imola has been “very different” from last year’s FIA World Endurance Championship outing in Italy, according to its technical director Olivier Jasonnie, when the brand debuted its 2024-spec 9X8.

The French manufacturer is returning to the site of the 9X8 2024’s race debut, which featured a new aero concept with the addition of a rear wing, changes in tire size, among other developments.

With 12 months of race and additional testing under its belt, Jansonnie said they can now extract other performance-related areas of the LMH-based prototype.

“In terms of how we approach the race is very different from what we did last year, that’s for sure,” he said.

“Last year was a new car, new race, new track, new everything.

“Here, we obviously know the car a bit better now and have more experience with it and most importantly with the track, we raced here last year, so we have some references.

“Anything we do we can always compare to what we had last year, setup-wise.”

When asked if he’s been happy with the evolution of the car, Jansonnie revealed they encountered some performance-related issues in February’s season-opening Qatar 1812km.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “Clearly we were reaching saturation in terms of performance with the old [car]. The new one, we also aligned with the others in terms of tire dimensions, which is easier to prepare.

“Qatar was not a great race for us, performance-wise. We managed to do the job and be a bit clever on some occasions.

“Performance-wise, it was not what we expected.

“We also found issues in Qatar that we did not have before, [in terms of] tire management and performance.

“Here it will be different.”

Peugeot, along with several other WEC manufacturers took part in a group test at Imola in March, although it was impacted by heavy rains.

“In testing over the winter, we still found some stuff, not really on [Imola] because in the end we couldn’t test properly here,” he said.

“I think we had a bit less than 20 relevant laps when we came here in the dry.

“Since then we’ve done quite a lot since Qatar. We found some interesting performance gains on the car. It’s very hard to tell whether we can apply it [this weekend] as we haven’t been able to test properly.”

Jansonnie confirmed that Peugeot also completed single-day tests at Barcelona, Paul Ricard and Spa-Francorchamps in addition to its one day outing in Imola since the season opener.

“As everybody now, we still have a few more days for this year,” he said. “I think everybody will do the same strategy, trying to focus most of the days before Le Mans for preparation for Le Mans.

“The second half of the season will be more relaxed in terms of testing.

“But for sure we’re pushing for Le Mans to try to validate the reliability of the car, which is using some days for that, and do the performance development with Le Mans as well.

“There’s a lot of testing. It’s not easy because especially in Europe it’s not the best time of the year to test; you can have what happened in Imola.

“We went to Spa expecting very, very bad weather and it was great. It’s the randomness of these things.”