24h Le Mans
Team Peugeot TotalEnergies will be making some changes to its 9X8 during the off-season. The French marque is intent on improving its performance.
Peugeot had a challenging 2023 but can take away a few positives. The 9X8’s reliability significantly improved over the season while the team held together and remained motivated, despite the ups and downs. Team Peugeot TotalEnergies finished its first full FIA WEC season fifth in the FIA Hypercar Manufacturers' World Endurance Championship (behind Toyota, Ferrari, Porsche and Cadillac). It is now looking ahead to 2024. Peugeot's off-season programme will begin in December. “First, we’ll get ready for the 2024 FIA WEC season, that will start earlier with the Qatar Prologue in February,” explains Olivier Jansonnie, Peugeot Sport Technical Director. “Meanwhile we also have to prepare for the 2024 24 Hours of Le Mans, and we have a lot to do. The period from December to April will be crucial and the challenge will be to prepare for the championship as best we can while getting ready for Le Mans. We will have to manage the complexity of the evolution of the car, that will of course be ready for Le Mans and the development during the first part of the season.”
In 2024, Team Peugeot TotalEnergies will focus its objectives on three points: organisation, reliability and performance. The French outfit has already made good progress on the first two points this year. Which leaves performance, something that Peugeot really has to step up to ward off even fiercer competition in 2024 with the arrival of Alpine, Lamborghini and BMW. “This is also why we are undergoing new developments on the car, to go for a concept that will be closer to that of the other competitors.”, states Jansonnie. This will allow us to reduce the impact of the BoP defects by finding solutions similar to the competition. Today, that’s the solution that could help us to find a better level of performance, which is our main goal for the coming season. The second goal will be to capitalise on our level of reliability; due to the evolutions we are planning, we will take some technical risks that we will have to ensure are reliable. This is something that has to be done quickly, before the start of the season, to unlock the same reliability we had at the end of the 2023 season.”
The Technical Director admits that Peugeot has yet to achieve the desired performance with the car, and concludes: “The team is ready for 2024 and if we manage to reach the level of performance we want, we will be able to fight with the leaders in 2024.”
