Peugeot announces that the 9×8 will not be at the 24 Hours of Le Mans

The team Peugeot TotalEnergies officially announced this Friday that its 9×8 Hypercar will not participate in the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2022. This will in fact be “in the race in the summer of 2022”, while “the end of winter and spring are devoted to development”. The entry into competition of the two cars, numbers 93 and 94, will therefore take place after the Sarthe classic. Probably on the occasion of the fourth round of the season WEC in Monza, as we mentioned in AUTOhebdo n°2350. 

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The Sochaux firm justifies this absence at the 24 Hours of Le Mans by focusing its efforts on the development and reliability of the performance of the 9×8. “This simply gives us time to achieve the required level of reliability, explains Olivier Jansonnie, Technical Director of the Peugeot WEC program. For obvious reasons of BoP settings, participation in the 24 Hours of Le Mans would only have been possible on condition of participating in the previous race of the championship, the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in this case. (May 7, 2022). Our schedule allows us to concentrate our teams and resources on our testing sessions, which will not be interrupted by participation in the Spa-Francorchamps and Le Mans races. Le Mans is the most difficult race in the championship, particularly in terms of reliability and operation. We will start with shorter races, which will allow us to gradually get started in the discipline. As with our production cars when we have to choose between deadline and quality, we choose quality”. 

Peugeot hopes to use the second half of the WEC season as a test bed for the 24 2023 Hours of Le Mans, where the 9×8 will have to compete against other Hypercars currently in development, like Porsche, whose prototype has been running in recent weeks. 

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