With Peugeot moving towards confirmation of its 2027 plans rapidly, with a new, heavily revised 9X8 having already been tested and a driver reshuffle very much on the cards, there is one piece of the jigsaw that is not yet established: who will be the team’s development driver for 2027?
In theory, that should be a simple question to answer, with Doriane Pin named back in March in a development role with Peugeot Sport.
That arrangement, though, was based around a major test at the Bahrain ‘Rookie’ Test sessions and, with the travails in the Middle East, the key date in the WEC calendar has simply disappeared and will not be replaced as part of the WEC’s replacement end-of-season plans at Monza.
Pin, though, will test with Peugeot Sport, not as an immediate assessment for inclusion in the team in a racing role but, in precisely the same way as Malthe Jakobsen and later Alex Quinn were, to determine suitability for a development and testing role and, in extremis, as a possible ‘force majeure’ factory driver stand-in.
That opportunity, Doriane’s first in a Hypercar, will come at Circuit Paul Ricard on 2nd December, where the current Duqueine Team LMP2 racer will run in the current-spec 2026 9X8.
Whilst both Jakobsen and Quinn impressed mightily in their ‘Rookie’ tests, the Paul Ricard outing presents a significant challenge for the 2025 F1 Academy Champion.
The current-spec 9X8 has proven to be a tricky package to extract peak performance from, hence the incoming revised car. Peugeot Sport, though, understands the package’s capabilities and what they want and need to see from an incoming young driver.
Pin’s form in LMP2 in 2026, returning to the formula this year after some solid performances for Prema before her single-seater adventures, has seen her show good speed, but Hypercar is an altogether different challenge, in particular because one advantage that the young French driver has in ELMS is countered by regulation in Hypercar: her weight.
Peugeot Sport team principal Emmanuel Esnault is clear on the task ahead, and its potential outcomes for Doriane:
“We want to do it in real conditions in terms of ballast and weight rules, basically, just to assess her performance properly. The idea is to make a proper assessment as we would do for a driver who expects to race with us,” he said.
The clear indication is that a future role as a test and development driver, and beyond that as a potential reserve driver, is on the line at the December test.
A different location, perhaps, than the opportunity and challenge that was offered to Jakobsen and Quinn, but with the same potential outcomes on the line.
Pin now looks set to be the third female driver to pilot a Hypercar. Genesis Magma Racing’s Jamie Chadwick ran in a GMR-001 on the Le Mans Test Day in June this year following a test outing at Magny-Cours earlier in the season. And Lilou Wadoux previously took the wheel of a 499P with Ferrari in two Bahrain Rookie Tests.
Both Doriane and Jamie Chadwick, though, could have been beaten to the punch had the planned Goodyear Hypercar tyre testing programme been permitted to go ahead as originally planned late last year.
Decisions from rule makers blocked a planned post-Bahrain test with a Proton-run Porsche 963 for Richard Lietz and Marvin Kirchhöfer, as well as a potential early 2027 test for members of the Iron Dames roster.
It’s unknown whether Pin was part of that original plan.
Either way, multiple young female drivers now have a defined pathway to a factory seat. Chadwick via the pipeline provided by the Genesis ‘Trajectory Programme’ and Pin via Peugeot Sport’s test and development role.
Will one of these young women be the first female Hypercar race driver? Time will tell.
