Team Peugeot TotalEnergies left the Circuit of The Americas with a single top-10 finish, the #94 PEUGEOT 9X8 climbing from 12th on the grid to 10th at the flag. The sister #93 car was compromised early by a weather-driven strategy call and came home 16th. Attention now turns to the 6 Hours of Fuji in three weeks.

A heavy shower swept across part of the Circuit of The Americas only minutes before the start of the Lone Star Le Mans, forcing two additional formation laps. The track dried quickly and the field was able to start on slick tyres, with track temperatures climbing past 40°C (above 104°F).

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A strong opening hour for both 9X8s

Starting 12th and 16th, both PEUGEOT 9X8 Hypercars gained ground immediately. Loïc Duval in the #94, running medium tyres, and Paul di Resta in the #93 on hards each picked up four positions in the opening stint. At the first stops, di Resta stayed aboard the #93 while Théo Pourchaire took over the #94 on four new mediums.

Split strategies, and one that did not pay

The team then deliberately separated the two cars’ race plans. The #93 pulled its second stop forward and handed over to Nick Cassidy, aiming to be well placed if the forecast showers arrived. The rain never reshaped the race as expected, and the sequence of calls left the car exposed to losing a lap — which it duly did, and never recovered, even after Stoffel Vandoorne took over and returned to a more conventional strategy.

The #94 had better luck with the timing of the caution periods. A Virtual Safety Car around half distance opened a window for its stop and driver change, putting Malthe Jakobsen aboard.

A three-hour triple stint to the flag

A second Virtual Safety Car in the final quarter of the race gave the #94 another opening. Running seventh at the time, Jakobsen made his last stop on lap 138 and then ran almost 50 minutes to the chequered flag. The restart produced a series of on-track battles through a closely fought final hour, and the Danish driver held on for 10th after a triple stint of more than three hours. Vandoorne brought the #93 home 16th.

“We anticipated a difficult race weekend with the specifies of the track andthe region. A very demanding race week for the drivers, the staff and the cars of course with such heat and humidity. We explored after qualifying two different ways to approach the race in terms of stint length and tyre compound to start. Some rain was expected at a certain point and influenced some decisions on the #93 which consequently was exposed to be lapped. The #94 could have expected reasonably a P7 and the battle the last hour of the race was quite intense. There is still some work to do to perform across the whole race weeks and extract decent results.” — Emmanuel Esnault, Team Principal, Team Peugeot TotalEnergies

Duval pointed to conditions inside the car and the change of plan late on. “I had a good opening stint with some great battles. It was extremely hot in the car, so I handed over to Théo for the second stint. Unfortunately, we had to change our tyre strategy which complicated things for Malthe towards the end of the race and wasn’t able to defend seventh place all the way to the finish,” he said.

Vandoorne was blunter about the #93’s afternoon: “When you’re a lap behind the leader for a large part of the race, it’s not easy. But we kept pushing all the way to the finish. The pace wasn’t too bad towards the end of the race. It’s a frustrating weekend for us, and we hope things will be different at Fuji.”

What it means

Texas has been an uncomfortable weekend for the French squad rather than a disastrous one. A car that started 12th and finished 10th, with a realistic shot at seventh, underlines that the 9X8’s race pace is closer to the sharp end than its qualifying position suggested — but also that the team is still leaving results on the table when the strategy calls do not fall its way. Esnault’s own assessment, that consistency across a full race week remains the weak point, is the clearest read on where the effort now goes.

The team’s next outing is the 6 Hours of Fuji in Japan in three weeks’ time.

Facts: Peugeot at Lone Star Le Mans

  • Circuit: Circuit of The Americas, Austin, Texas
  • Race length: six hours
  • #94 PEUGEOT 9X8: Duval / Pourchaire / Jakobsen — started 12th, finished 10th
  • #93 PEUGEOT 9X8: Di Resta / Cassidy / Vandoorne — started 16th, finished 16th
  • Conditions: rain shower before the start, then dry; track temperature above 40°C (104°F)
  • Final #94 pit stop: lap 138
  • Next round: 6 Hours of Fuji, in three weeks

Source: www.media.stellantis.com