Peugeot admits disappointment at the pace of development of its Le Mans 9X8 hypercar after failing to make Hyperpole qualifying at the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Jean-Marc Finot, the French manufacturer’s motorsport boss, says in-house team Peugeot Sport has “improved, but not enough”. Mikkel Jensen and Loic Duval did not finish in the top eight qualifying for the final qualifying session.
Peugeot became the only one of the five major automakers in the Hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship not to make it into Thursday night’s Hyperpole session.
“We have improved from race to race, but have not yet reached the pace that we expected,” says Finot. “We need to improve to catch the top group.”
Jensen finished tenth in Wednesday night’s qualifying session with a time of 3m27.546s, 2.3s behind Antonio Fuoco’s Ferrari 499P at the top of the timesheets. Duval was three tenths off his teammate at 3m27.850s and finished eleventh in the hour-long session.
Finot emphasizes that this is an improvement compared to the last WEC race in Spa at the end of April: “In Spa we were down two seconds to two minutes, now we’re two seconds over three and a half minutes, so we’ve improved.”
Finot also points out that between the first free practice session and the first qualifying session, the competition have all made greater progress than Peugeot: “Our competitors have done a better job.”
Jensen is happy with his lap that put him in the top 10. He drove them on tires that had already peaked: “I have the feeling that I got the best out of the car, but we didn’t get the lap together and couldn’t show our pace.”
Bad luck for Peugeot
“On my best lap I was hampered by a GT car in the Ford chicane and on my second best lap the red flag came out a second from the finish line. The first lap would have been very good at 3.26 minutes. Will that get us into hyperpole? I don’t know.” The cut was 3:26,020 minutes.
Peugeot’s failure in qualifying follows significant progress during last Sunday’s Le Mans test day and Wednesday afternoon’s first free practice session. Both in the morning session of the test day and in the first practice session, the Peugeot was only six tenths behind its best time.
Peugeot was a big beneficiary of last week’s change to the hypercar’s balance of performance. As the only one of the five main players in the class, he was not affected by a minimum weight increase.