Peugeot team boss and VP of Stellantis Motorsport, Jean-Marc Finot, told media that Peugeot are ‘heading in the right direction’, as they are a second quicker than they were at Le Mans last year.
“If we compare the lap time with the last year, despite the car is a heavier and less powerful, we are one second faster than we used to be last year. So it’s in the right direction,” said Finot to reporters after the qualifying session for this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, which decided who will compete for pole in Thursday’s Hyperpole session.
Jean-Eric Vergne qualified the #93 Peugeot in 16th place, setting a 3:26.195. Last year, his teammate Mikkel Jensen set a 3:27.260 in the same session — so over a second quicker.
Furthermore, this year Vergne was 1.760 off the session-topping time from BMW’s Dries Vanthoor. Last year, Jensen was 2.047 seconds away.
Peugeot introduced a brand new car at the second round of this year’s round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, the 6 Hours of Imola. While it is still named ‘9X8’, the vast majority of the car and its aero surfaces are new.
The major changes to the car were new tyres sizes, 29-inch at the front and 34-inch at the back, replacing the 31-inch tyres all round. The French squad also added a rear wing, to rebalance the car after the tyre dimensions were changed.
‘This is the first time with this car on this track. So we still have some work on the setup to do in FP2, FP3, and FP4. We will use these free practise sessions to optimise the pace for the race,’ said Finot.
As can be expected, the team were not happy with the pace of the car, but Finot did point out it’s very close in front of them.
So, of course, we are not happy with the pace, we would have loved to be faster,” said the Frenchman.
‘However, it’s still very close because we are just at 1.7 seconds in P16. We already have 12 cars in just one second.
‘But we have we don’t have to forget that Le Mans is a very long, long track, at least, twice more than all the tracks. So it means that once again, it’s 0.4 on the track. So it means that the Hypercar class is a very competitive. The cars are very close.’
Both Vergne and his teammate Stoffel Vandoorne, in the #93 Peugeot, set their laps early and did not better them through the session, with traffic management being an issue, Finot said.
‘We made our best lap time at the beginning. Despite the improvement of the car, we have been bothered by the traffic, we did not manage well.
‘Two times JEV [Vergne] has been stopped. And Stoffel [Vandoorne, driver of the #94 Peugeot] one time also has been stopped. in his fastest lap, but that’s the gap on the risk,’ he concluded.
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