Photo: Fabrizio Boldoni/DPPI
Peugeot admits it had been expecting to show more performance in the opening round of the FIA World Endurance Championship in Qatar based on its speed in the Prologue test, as it ended up with a best finish of ninth place.
The marque’s technical director Olivier Jansonnie made the remarks after the No. 93 Peugeot 9X8 shared by Paul di Resta, Mikkel Jensen and Jean-Eric Vergne came home almost 90 seconds down on the leaders in the Qatar 1812km.
Loic Duval, Stoffel Vandoorne and Hypercar debutant Malthe Jakobsen finished 12th in the sister car, a lap down, behind the two factory Porsche 963s.
The race marked the first appearance for the 9X8 in its latest iteration, featuring suspension-focused upgrades that were made with the use of an Evo joker.
“The pace was not as good as we expected from what we saw in the Prologue, frankly,” Jansonnie told Sportscar365. “Still, we realize that it’s all very close at the minute.
“We couldn’t fight with the top cars. We tried to optimize what we could do, and we are not too bad at this kind of game normally, and this was the strong point of our race.”
Both 9X8 crews were hit with drive-through penalties during the race, the No. 93 car being handed one for di Resta speeding during a full-course yellow early in the race.
The No. 94 car was penalized with two hours to go after Duval forced the No. 5 Porsche of Michael Christensen off-track during a battle for the final points-paying position.
Asked to comment on the battle that resulted in the penalty, Jansonnie reflected: “The performance our car versus Porsche was very close, it’s not a big surprise that every position is hard to get here. Overtaking is quite difficult.
“When the cars are that close and you can’t overtake, you end up with this type of situation on-track. You can say it was too harsh or not, but for us it was racing.”
Jansonnie admitted prior to the race that Qatar was not one of the circuits where he expected the 9X8’s new suspension upgrade to have much of an impact.
On whether he expected to see more benefit next time in Imola, he replied: “It’s difficult to tell. Last year we had a good race in Imola, a track we didn’t know before.
“We will go testing there before the race and see where we are.”
Suspension Upgrade Aimed at Improved Aero Performance
Prior to the Qatar race, Jansonnie explained the thinking behind the changes made to the front and rear suspension on the 9X8 for the opening race, with WEC rules now requiring Evo joker updates to be made in time for the opening round.
He said that while the upgrade should provide benefits at most circuits, it is specifically target at tracks such as The Circuit of the Americas where Peugeot struggled in 2024.
“It’s something we have been testing for a while now,” he said. “It’s a refinement of the car. It’s an optimization of the suspension to try to get the aero to work better on the car. We try to stabilize the platform and get a better effect on the aero.
“We are not changing the aero, but we try and use the aero map of the car a bit better by stabilizing the platform.
“There are some tracks that were particularly poor for us performance-wise, for example Austin, so this kind of track should be better for us with this update.”
Jansonnie also revealed a change of philosophy for Peugeot in terms of how it makes use of its limited testing allocation of eight days (including two days where two cars can be used), focusing more on event-by-event preparation.
“We had test days left last year, so part of our validation for Le Mans 2025 has been done in December,” he explained. “We don’t have to do it from the 2025 days. The idea was to do this very early so that we can focus on the performance development for the season.
“We also tried to do more tests on proper WEC tracks, specific event preparation that we didn’t do in 2024. We will go testing at Imola and Spa. We also came here [Qatar] in January, for instance.”
Jansonnie refused to confirm the number of Evo jokers that Peugeot has used so far, but did confirm that at least one was used over the winter of 2022-23, potentially making the latest revision the third time the marque has played jokers.
He also declined to state whether Peugeot has any of its five jokers remaining.
