The Peugeot 9X8 had a debut of lights and shadows at the 6 Hours of Monza. During free practice he showed a very promising pace, lapping in time with the rest of the prototypes. However, throughout the weekend the LMH prototype of the lion’s signature suffered various problems of youth, incidents that left the Peugeot #93 out of the equation in the race almost as soon as it started. For its part, the #94 was also hampered by some problems, although the pilots of this prototype managed to see the finish line.
Despite this crossing of sensations, Olivier Jansonnie as technical head of the project believes that the debut of the Peugeot 9X8 has left positive feelingssince the team managed to learn a lot and see the finish line with one of its two prototypes, something that can be considered as a mission accomplished: «You have to be honest and you can’t hide that it was a difficult race for us. We came to learn and the truth is that we have also learned a lot. It has been difficult in some ways. The #93 has had technical problems from the beginning, but that also serves to improve».
In this line, the person in charge of Peugeot assures: «The #94 competed well during the first two hours of the race. Then the Safety Car came at the most inopportune moment for us and from there the problems grew. In spite of everything, it is necessary to make a positive reading. In general, I think the performance of the cars was there. We’ve shown that we can do some pretty good lap times, so we’re happy with that. We knew we had a lot to learn and somehow that goal has been achieved.».
When explaining the problems that affected the Peugeot #93 during almost the entire event, both Olivier Jansonnie and the rest of those responsible for the event have been quite brief in their explanations: «It seems that there has been some kind of fault with the supercharging of the V6 engine, but we cannot give more details. The truth is that we do not know if this was the final problem or the consequence of another problem. We are going to analyze the data we have collected in Monza to correct these situations».
They have been clearer from Peugeot when talking about #94: «Our other car had overheating in the transmission, initially due to debris from other cars that got stuck in the vehicle. We had to stop a few more times than we wanted due to a temperature problem in the car. However, we learned to manage the car in traffic, so there was also a learning. We have shown that the performance is there. When the car runs smoothly, we can race».
Photos: peugeot sport