Following the conclusion of their final preparation races last month, the teams of the 2026 24 Hours of Le Mans have turned their focus solely to the 94th edition of the French endurance classic.
Last week, DSC had the opportunity to visit Peugeot TotalEnergies, and its impressive Versailles Satory base, which houses Peugeot’s Hypercar and customer racing programmes, as well as Stellantis’ Formula E effort, to discover more about how a Hypercar outfit prepares for the biggest event of the year.
Upon our arrival, the team had just returned from its pre-Le Mans shakedown at Magny-Cours, where both 9X8s, as well as all the parts that the team intends to run on them across both test and race week, were checked and signed-off as battle-ready.
The pair of 9X8s each sat in their own workspace, being readied for Le Mans week. Amongst the first items on the job list was to assess both cars for any potential damage, ensuring that something as simple as a loose stone hadn’t dented the bodywork and moved the car outside of its homologation window.
And with its final track time before the Le Mans Test Day complete, the focus had already turned to the simulator as the key tool through which Peugeot will finalise its preparations.
Each driver spends dedicated sessions in the simulator, where, as well as clocking up mileage, they work alongside their race engineer on rehearsing all of the procedures which might come up across the 24-hour race.
“I think one of the key things for Le Mans, which, as a driver, you need to know by heart, is the slow zones,” explained Malthe Jakobsen, driver of the #94 9X8.
“You need to know exactly where they start and finish, and this is something quite unique compared to a lot of other tracks. You have nine different slow zones which can be activated at different times, and if you anticipate the release a little bit too early in a specific zone, race control will get pinged immediately, so the simulator is fantastic to replicate all of the scenarios in the slow zones.”
Another perk of the simulator is that it’s an opportunity to practice running in traffic, something which is difficult to replicate in testing.
This is especially important for Peugeot’s pair of new signings, Nick Cassidy (below) and Theo Pourchaire, both of whom have previously raced at Le Mans in a lower category but will be racing in Hypercar for the first time.
“To drive there [at Le Mans] in GT was obviously nice, but not the same,” admitted Cassidy, who competed aboard an AF Corse-run Ferrari 488 GTE Evo in 2022.
“And always, I must say, driving there with the eye of preparation for the day that I’m in Hypercar. This means that back then I was trying to take notes of where it was good to be overtaken as a GT driver, and where was the speed difference as a Hypercar driver.
“And now a few years later, being on the simulator this morning, personally focusing on performance driving, but then also having that traffic management in mind, which I’ve seen the other side of. We use ghost cars, so of course it’s never exactly the same, but to get some rhythm and understanding it’s quite good.”
One of the major challenges for the pair is that this will be their first race in Hypercar during which they compete alongside LMP2 machinery. With the ORECA 07 – Gibson LMP2 matching the pace of the Hypercars through certain sections, they provide a very different task to navigate compared to the LMGT3 category, which is present at every FIA WEC round.
“I think traffic is the main topic for me in Le Mans this year, because I will have to overtake GT3s, but also LMP2s, and the LMP2s are quite quick in the high-speed corners,” Pourchaire explained.
“You can catch an LMP2 at the entry of the Porsche Curves, and maybe not overtake them until before the last chicane, which is quite late. I know now how the traffic works in general; you have to anticipate a lot, and it’s better to anticipate a bit too much than being too much on the limit and losing time. And in Le Mans, you’ve got to be clever because the race is long and one small mistake can cost you quite a lot.”
Away from the simulator, this period of the year is also one where drivers focus on getting themselves in peak physical condition, given the additional toll a 24-hour race and a week of late nights in the build-up take.
“Through my physical preparation, especially now before Le Mans, I try to lose a bit of weight, eat well, sleep well, do a lot of exercise, and this all comes together,” Pourchaire said. “If I want to perform in the gym or on track, I have to eat well.”
Le Mans, for some drivers, is the only race each year where they perform multiple stints in a car, meaning that their regular race day approach needs to be abandoned for something more sustainable over 24 hours.
This means that the 9X8 isn’t the only thing at Peugeot which will have a fuelling plan, with the entire team, but in particular the drivers, needing to have the right energy at the right time throughout race week.
When I’m about to jump in the car, I think it’s important for myself to feel quite light, and not eat too much
“When I’m about to jump in the car, I think it’s important for myself to feel quite light, and not eat too much, but at least eat something that is good enough for my body to have enough strength for a full stint,” Pourchaire explained.
“Sometimes after driving I can get really hungry, so I like to eat a lot after driving, but in Le Mans it’s going to be particular [food], because I will have to do a few stints, and you always need to stay consistent with the food if you want to race well. If you eat a lot, you don’t feel so well and you cannot sleep straight after, and that’s very important.”
With stints of up to four hours, the physical exertion of racing at Le Mans requires drivers to look after themselves, which is where the team around them, such as physios, can play a key role.
As with fuelling, this is more important for a 24-hour race than over a shorter distance, given drivers need to recover quickly enough to drive again in just a few hours’ time.
For Pourchaire, his warm-up routine will begin up to 45 minutes before his stint is set to begin, to allow himself a break afterwards before getting in the car.
The warm-up will especially focus on the muscles that racing a Peugeot 9X8 punishes, such as his shoulders, neck and calves, as well as his reflexes and reactions.
It’s a routine that the Frenchman has maintained from his days climbing the junior single-seater ladder, although, with the 9X8 featuring power steering, it has evolved slightly to focus on endurance more than strength.
“It’s more or less the same,” he stated. “The difference is, in Formula 2, the races are one hour so it’s not as painful, but you don’t have any power steering, so I was focusing a bit more on the arms.”
As with any kind of warm-up, the benefits of this only really show themselves when Pourchaire forgoes his standard routine.
“Straight out of the box, I feel a bit too lazy, not fully ready,” the 22-year-old explained. “If nothing’s happening on the track, it’s not a big issue, but you never know. You can exit the pit lane with cold tyres, fighting with some cars, overtaking traffic, and then it starts raining…
“And then, with no proper warm-up, after my run, I can also feel a bit of pain in the shoulders sometimes, because I have long arms, and back pain if I don’t open properly and stretch a bit. It’s small details, but it makes a big difference actually.”
The purpose of all this preparation is with one goal in mind: to deliver Peugeot TotalEnergies its best finish at the 24 Hours of Le Mans since the end of the 908 programme, on the 100th anniversary of the brand’s first start at the event.
It’s like when you are skydiving. You are excited about it, but there is a bit of fear.
The 2023 edition, its first back at Le Mans since 2011, appeared to be a breakout race for the 9X8 programme, with the #94 entry leading overnight before falling back with an accident and then mechanical issues.
The past two years, however, have proven more challenging for the French marque, with Peugeot finishing 11th on both occasions having lacked the outright pace of its Hypercar rivals.
Post-Le Mans 2025, however, the Peugeot programme has found a level of consistency which was initially absent, with it the only manufacturer to place both cars in the Top 10 in each of the final four races of the FIA WEC season.
This streak, unfortunately, came to an end at this year’s season opener at Imola, the 9X8’s weakest circuit on the calendar, but strong qualifying performances at both the Italian venue and Spa, where Jakobsen claimed Peugeot’s maiden FIA WEC pole, have kept the mood high in the team.
“The mindset is positive,” stated team principal Emmanuel Esnault. “We’ve had one preparation race less compared to previous years, because Qatar has been rescheduled to the end of the season, but we feel we are ready.
“Le Mans is always a big jump. It’s like when you are skydiving. You are excited about it, but there is a bit of fear always, because it’s a tough race. Everybody knows it. The competition will be extremely high, and as we have seen since the beginning of the season, it’s a very competitive championship, so as a race enthusiast, I’m looking forward to it.”
Esnault, who is entering his first Le Mans as team principal, is clearly concentrating on maximising Peugeot’s internal performance, rather than stressing over how it stacks up compared to the opposition.
It’s here where placing a key focus on items such as slow zone regulations and negotiating traffic makes sense, as does the decision to ensure Cassidy and Pourchaire both received night stints during a test at Circuit Paul Ricard last month.
“The priority is ‘to finish first, first you have to finish’, as we say,” he confirmed. “To execute properly operationally, make sure we don’t do any mistakes, focus on ourselves and we will see. We know that it will be a tough challenge, so we have to do our job properly, and people who are going to survive will hopefully have opportunities.”
A 24-hour race, naturally, will bring about more opportunities than over a shorter distance, due to the larger timeframe over which issues can inflict members of the 18-car strong Hypercar grid.
Peugeot knows all too well the kind of misfortune that can strike; the #94 9X8 had to retire at Spa after Jakobsen was unable to avoid a spinning LMGT3 car in front of him at Les Combes.
“The longer the race, the more opportunities you may have to get into trouble logically,” Esnault explained, before clarifying that, despite this, much more than luck is required to win.
“You never win Le Mans by luck. People who are winning Le Mans have everything aligned, so it’s really a big challenge to win Le Mans, because there are so many parameters to take into consideration.”
The hope for Peugeot, therefore, is that it can have everything aligned for 24 hours, with the 9X8 having a narrower performance window than some of its rivals. This helps explain why, so far in 2026, it has looked stronger over a single lap than a race distance, a trend that the marque will be looking to reverse for Le Mans.
“We have talented drivers who are able to extract performance from the car, and the performance window of the car is quite narrow, so we need all the planets to align, the driver in a good mindset, the good track condition and so on, to make this sort of performance,” Esnault said.
“But it means that there is performance in the car in terms of pure pace, so it’s up to us to work and to make sure that we can adapt to the car perfectly to the weather and track conditions.”
As Peugeot celebrates 100 years of racing at Le Mans, this feels like a fairytale edition for the 9X8 to come of age and deliver on the promise it has shown periodically since debuting at Monza in 2022.
The pressure to try and make this a reality falls firmly on the shoulders of Esnault, who, although new to Peugeot, is no stranger to Le Mans, having first worked in motorsport by volunteering with Courage Competition at the race in the early 1990s, and more recently acted as Lamborghini’s project director for the SC63 programme.
“For a French manufacturer as big as Peugeot, which has won Le Mans, I feel the pressure more than usual, because we’ve got big corporate companies who are partners of the programme,” he explained.
“Peugeot is doing some great activation around the event and the century of involvement in Le Mans, so naturally there will be many guests and high expectations, so it adds a bit of weight on the shoulders to make sure that we are doing well and promoting properly the brand.”
So, where does Esnault believe Peugeot can cross the line at 4 PM next Sunday?
“If you ask my wife during the night, I can dream about winning Le Mans, but we have to be reasonable. I think a top five would be would be great result.”
Images courtesy of DPPI
