Peugeot TotalEnergies’ latest ‘Joker’ update for the 9X8 targets improvements in platform stability and aero for its third full season in the FIA WEC’s Hypercar class.
The end of the 2024 season for the team showed promise when the #93 car scored a third-place finish in Bahrain, but the French manufacturer is under increasing pressure to claim a first win with the car in 2025. The hope though, is that throughout the season this new suspension update to both the front and rear of the car will allow the team to take the next step forward.
“It’s something we have been testing for a while (since November),” Olivier Jansonnie, Peugeot Sport’s technical director, explained when asked by reporters about the ‘Joker’ played for the 2025 season, which was signed off in time for the season opener after being validated over the winter.
“It’s a refinement of the suspension to get the aero to work better on the car, stabilise the platform and get a better aero effect. We cannot change the aero but we can actually improve it. We are trying to use the aero map on the car better by stabilising the car. That’s the main target, it does many different things but that’s the biggest thing.
“It’s difficult to assess your weaknesses when you’re on your own testing, so it took a few races last year to assess what weaknesses we had,” he continued. “We found some interesting stuff in comparison to what our competitors are able to do and we are not able to do, at least yet. It took us some races. Le Mans was clear, then Austin and Sao Paulo. By Austin, we knew what we were looking for.
“And we still haven’t finished (evaluating and validating the change to the suspension). You homologate something but there are combinations, you have options on set-up. Basically, doing something on the front suspension will allow you to change something on the diff as well, for example.”
Jansonnie went on to explain that the suspension update is unlikely to make a significant difference in Qatar this week, due to the characteristics of the circuit, which is flat and features a smooth surface.
However, once the WEC travels to tracks such as Imola and CoTA later in the season, the team should begin to really see the benefits of its development, which adds to the car’s 2024 aerodynamic overhaul and the hydraulic gear shift actuator which was introduced in 2023.
“We believe there is a benefit everywhere but there are tracks where we were particularly poor performance-wise,” he said. “Austin for example wasn’t a good race for us, and for this type of track, it should be better for us with the update. We’ve also worked on software and refinements. System wise the car is quite different to last year here.”
It is not entirely clear how many ‘Jokers’ Peugeot has used to this point, Jansonnie wouldn’t disclose that information publically. “We don’t want to discuss what we are doing strategy-wise,” he said. “It’s a bit of a game now, of who is doing what and adding what. We can explain what we changed, but not how we’ve dealt with it with the FIA.”
He did though outline Peugeot’s strategy for testing over the winter, revealing that the team has had an eye on Le Mans since December.
“The amount of testing is reduced by regulation, so we are now down to eight 24-hour days of testing from January to December. We had days left in December so part of our Le Mans validation has already been done. The idea was to do this early so we could focus on performance development for the season and test more on WEC tracks, such as Imola and Spa.”
A huge season beckons and everyone within the team knows it, particularly in the wake of Carlos Tavares’ departure from Stellantis as CEO and Alain Favey’s appointment as chief exec at Peugeot after Linda Jackson’s retirement. Jansonnie stressed though that the programme is still receiving the full level of support from above.
“So far there’s no change, the brand is still fully committed to this project and there’s huge support definitely,” he said. “We are improving but it’s getting more and more difficult. There’s pressure, but there was pressure last year.”
