In a year of significant evolution to the majority of the cars in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Hypercar category, Peugeot’s 9X8 has received only minor modifications ahead of the 2026 season.
As the French manufacturer is believed to have used up all of its allotted ‘Jokers’, the car has instead undergone only small aerodynamic changes, necessitated by the wind tunnel being used for the homologation process, switching from Sauber’s facility to the one in Windshear, North Carolina.
“If you compare the two cars, the 2025 and the 2026, if you have a very detailed look at it, you can spot the difference, but you have to be an expert to see it,” Peugeot’s new team principal, Emmanuel Esnault, tells DSC.
“It’s some parts trimmed, some extension. There are maybe six or seven areas on the bodywork where changes have been applied, but it’s very minor. The target was to correct what was homologated at the [Sauber] Hinwil wind tunnel to be in the homologation window [for Windshear].”
Peugeot TotalEnergies ended the 2025 season on a strong run of form, with podium finishes at COTA and Fuji, and both cars finishing in the top 10 across the final four rounds. To put that streak into perspective, no other manufacturer is currently on a run of more than one double-points finish ahead of the 2026 season opener.
“Keeping the momentum that the team started to build at the end of last season is definitely the plan,” Esnault says. He is, however, reluctant to set out any specific result targets for the team this season, highlighting the unknown factor that its opposition forms heading into 2026.
“The specificity of the championship makes it impossible today to know where our car will be versus our competitors, so we need first to focus on ourselves, and make sure that in terms of operations, execution and preparation, we are perfect. And if the performance of the car is there, we should come back with good results.”
Esnault, who replaced Olivier Jansonnie as team principal at the start of this year, was an external hire for Peugeot Sport, having joined from DC Racing Solutions, where he previously worked as project director on the Lamborghini SC63 programme. This means Esnault is well-placed to assess how the Peugeot programme currently stacks up, and the new arrival was positively surprised by what he has found.
“I discovered a very different landscape between the external perception and the result achieved so far by Peugeot TotalEnergies, and the inside world,” he says.
“It’s very organised, very professional, high level of commitment from the people, lots of people with experience and deep knowledge in many areas. So now the plan is to extract the maximum of what we have and to transform it into tangible results.
“The plan is to perform as much as we can. It’s always difficult to set up plans, creating too high expectations is always a big trap that we don’t want to fall in. We know it’s a very competitive championship, so we are fighting with big boys.
“There is no one on the grid who hasn’t got the same ambition as us, which is performing in the best possible way, so I prefer personally not to create expectation and promise anything, but I’m sure that there is a potential to do something interesting.”
Amongst the challenges for Peugeot this year is the arrival of an updated Michelin tyre, which will make its FIA WEC debut at the season-opening 6 Hours of Imola. The finalised 2026-spec rubber was only made available for private testing recently, with the 9X8 having only run it during a test outing at Portimão earlier this month so far.
Creating too high expectations is always a big trap that we don’t want to fall in
“Changing a tyre compound is never a minor thing,” Esnault says.
“There is a bit of unknown. Will it radically change the behaviour of cars? I’m not sure, honestly. It’s just some adjustment on how you approach the warm-up, the tyre degradation, how you approach all the management of this aspect, but it will not drastically change the way the car operates trackside.”
Looking to the future, 2027 looks set to be a huge year for Peugeot’s programme. Despite the extensions to the LMH and LMDh regulations, which will keep current cars eligible until at least the end of 2029, the French marque would prefer to debut a brand-new challenger rather than apply for additional ‘Jokers’ and update the current car again. There’s no confirmation yet on which direction Peugeot will be taking next year, though DSC’s sources suggest it’s most likely the former.
Either way, the latest Hypercar and GTP testing declaration reiterates that work is well underway. Peugeot has conducted three ‘special’ tests, including two rollouts during February, at Monthléry and Chateauroux.
“It’s something we are working on very hard,” Esnault says, although he remains tight-lipped on details. Instead, he sets out a timeline of “the coming weeks and months” for when we will hear more about Peugeot’s 2027 plans.
The decision by Peugeot to make a long-term commitment to the Hypercar formula comes despite its underwhelming set of results, as the three-time Le Mans winner chases its first victory since returning to prototype racing in 2022.
“I think we are lucky to have the brand’s willingness to use motorsport as a platform and marketing tool, and with a mid-to-long term commitment,” he says. “We have to respect that and not disappoint the brand, to deliver the right tool to perform, so when we are talking about pressure, it’s on this way.
I think we are lucky to have the brand’s willingness to use motorsport as a platform and marketing tool
“We’ve got internal pressure because we feel the trust that the Peugeot brand is giving to this project and I think for the championship. The championship must understand that it’s very valuable to have Peugeot, a French manufacturer, and a historic one, which has won three times at Le Mans, committed in a long-term plan in endurance despite the results, which have been, we can say it, under the expectation and despite many bumps on the road.”
What comes next will see Peugeot through to the end of the current era of Hypercar technical regulations in 2030, when a unified set of rules is expected to be implemented. The future of the ruleset is yet to be formally defined, but with manufacturer interest booming, there’s a strong movement to create a package which helps maintain sportscar racing’s upward trajectory through the 100th 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2032, and beyond.
“Common sense must prevail to build something convenient for all, because everybody has got a different agenda,” Esnault declares. “If you are a promoter, if you are the governing body, if you are a car manufacturer, if you are a private team. The most important [thing] is to make sure that the general interest is coming first, to make the platform stronger.
“The stronger the platform, the better it will be for manufacturers. A strong platform is good media coverage, controlled cost, logical way of deployment of the technical regulations, it’s a mix of many things, so that’s why it’s hard work. It’s hard work because it’s a world championship, and you’ve got different agendas, a different cycle and different timing for manufacturers.”
Images courtesy of Peugeot Sport (featured), David Lord & Andrew Hall
