When looking at the FIA World Endurance Championship, it's clear the LMH-rules cars have, generally speaking, a performance advantage over the LMDh-rules cars.
Yes Porsche won the drivers' world championship, but Toyota won three races while Ferrari also won two. The others were won by Porsche, although admittedly Ferrari should have won at Spa-Francorchamps if it wasn't for unlucky timing (for them) of the red flag towards the end of the race, which handed the customer JOTA team a win with the #12 Porsche 963.
The outlier to this is Peugeot. Both versions of the 9X8 have been developed to the LMH ruleset, which allows manufacturers greater design freedom, no spec parts, and the ability to run an electric motor on the front axle. This makes the car four-wheel drive when the hybrid system activates the motor, whereas the LMDh cars from Porsche, Alpine, BMW and Cadillac can only have an electric motor on the rear axle, adding power along with the internal combustion engine.
So, if the 'rule' was followed, Peugeot should be 'faster' pace wise than the likes of Porsche. Except they aren't.
Comparing the gap each race
Above, and below, are graphs comparing Peugeot's performance over the 2024 season, compared with Toyota's, who won the manufacturers' world title. We've taken the top 20% laps set by each car, combined them into an average, and then combined each car's average to create a team average for each race.
The first thing to note is Peugeot were actually quicker at Qatar. This was the last race with the 'old' wingless 9X8, but the car suited Losail International Circuit almost perfectly, with the track surface almost 'billiard-table' smooth. However, the French manufacturer has stated since that they'd extracted all the performance from the car. Hence, the new 9X8, with a wing.
This new car was introduced at the next race, held at Imola. With this new car, compared to Toyota, Peugeot were almost a second off the pace, or nearly 1% on average.
Peugeot used its old 9X8 for the final time in Qatar, before introducing the new car at Imola. Images: Thomas Fenetre / DPPI (left), Julien Delfosse / DPPI (right)
This came down significantly at Spa, but went up again at Le Mans. The gap at Le Mans, though — 2.2 seconds — is deceiving, which is why we've generated an average percentage gap as well as a time gap.
Because Le Mans is almost double the length of Spa, the time gap makes it look like Peugeot were 4x slower in France compared to Belgium. In fact, they weren't — they were only slightly slower than they were at Imola.
This is a little surprising when you consider the previous year. The wingless 9X8 performed well at Le Mans, if very inconsistently. However, the #93 car was, on average over the race, just under two tenths up a lap compared to the best of the Toyotas, the #7. The other Peugeot was around 1.7 off the #7 Toyota. And if you take the average from both cars from each team, the gap was again around seven tenths, or 0.31%.
So, this almost tripled with the new car. But, where was the time actually being lost? And how did this compare to 2023?
Losing time in the French countryside
Crunching the individual sector times reveals that, in 2024, Peugeot were losing most of their time in the first sector, around 1.3% off Toyota on average throughout the race. Compared to 2023, this is almost 1%.
In fact, in all three sectors around the lap, the new 9X8 was slower than the old 9X8 in 2023.
The first sector at Le Mans is roughly from the start/finish line until Tertre Rouge. The second sector comprises the full Mulsanne straight, including the chicanes, up to Mulsanne corner. The third sector is the rest of the lap, including Indianapolis, Arnage, the Porsche Curves and the end of the lap with the Ford Chicanes.
With Peugeot losing most of their time in the first and third sectors — 1.3% in the first, and 0.94% in the third — it can be deduced that the car is slower in the twisty bits (technical term), requiring downforce, than in a straight line. However, they were still losing 0.64% compared to Toyota on average in the second sector, so it's not like it's all rosy there either.
This could be down to any number of things. It was only the car's third race, compared to 2023, when they had a number of races under their belt and almost certainly understood the car more than they did in at Le Mans this year.
It could also be down to balance of performance. Although Peugeot were running 6kg lighter than Toyota at Le Mans in 2024 — 1,047kg compared to Toyota's 1,053kg — they both had the same amount of power, 508kW, roughly 681hp. If each 1kg costs a tenth of a second (pure speculation)... that's six tenths of a second, instantly.
Peugeot were also losing 0.70% power when they exceeded 250kph, compared to Toyota who gained 0.90%. That'd put Peugeot on 504.44kW, and Toyota on 512.57kW.
Clearly, though, the car isn't as good as one of WEC's benchmark cars, the GR010 Hybrid. Towards the end of the 2024 season, WEC reduced the 9X8's weight and increased the power considerably. And as we can see from the graph higher up in this article, at Fuji and Bahrain, this has helped considerably.
Peugeot getting closer
As the 2024 season progressed, it's clear Peugeot got faster. They almost claimed a podium at Fuji, and then did so at Bahrain, albeit when Ferrari were disqualified. But still, a podium's a podium.
Before this, at Interlagos and COTA, the 9X8 suffered, way of Toyota's pace. The way to possibly explain this is that the car is still struggling over bumps and uneven surfaces, the same as the old car did.
But this wasn't a problem at the smooth Fuji and Bahrain.
Sector 1 at Bahrain is from the start finish line to after turn 4. Sector 2 takes you up to just after turn 12 and the back straight, while sector 3 finishes the lap, with the long straight perpendicular to the main straight.
Once again, Peugeot were over 1% off Toyota's average in sector 2 — the bit requiring more downforce than sector 1 and 3. So while they were closer to Toyota on average during the race in Bahrain — they were still seemingly lacking in downforce.
The French car was running 34kg lighter than the Toyota in the Middle East — 1,031kg compared to 1,065kg. The Hypercar regulations state that the cars can't be run lower than 1,030kg, so Peugeot is very close to the minimum weight.
Power, meanwhile, was 499kW for Toyota, compared to Peugeot with 520kW — the most powerful car on the grid in Bahrain. And yet they were still losing out to Toyota in sectors requiring power — namely, the first and third sectors. That said, the French car was losing 5.20% of its power after 250kph, while Toyota gained 4.20%.
Looking up towards the end of the season
Towards the end of the season, after some rough performances in Brazil and Texas for the French manufacturer, things started looking up in Fuji or Bahrain.
While ultimate performance still wasn't found, the #93 car came very close to an inaugural podium for the 2024 9X8, just over 3.5 seconds off the #36 Alpine. And at Bahrain, after the #51 Ferrari was disqualified for exceeding its tyre allocation, the same #93 machine inherited third, which it had lost late on in the race to Ferrari's Antonio Giovinazzi.
After qualifying 14th in Fuji and 18th – last — in Bahrain, these results seem very unlikely. So how did they happen?
The Racing Line asked Peugeot's technical director, Olivier Jansonnie, this very question on the Sunday morning after the race in Bahrain. His answer?
"Tyres," he said.
"It's as simple as that," the Frenchman continued. "How well you manage your tyres is the biggest contributor of pace at any given time.
"We've been consistently slow at the start of the race and stronger at the end because we have fresh tyres."
In Bahrain, which Jansonnie said was Peugeot's best race "operation wise", the team saved its medium tyres until the end, using them to great effect up front on the surviving #93 car, while most other cars had already switched to hards.
"We knew the race would be all about tyre degradation," said Jansonnie. "We had to make sure that we set targets, we don't get too excited at the beginning of the race, trying to follow people we can't follow because of the missing pace we have.
"If we manage to do that, we can stay close in the end."
The Racing Line's pace analysis backs up Jansonnie's comments. They were 1.94% off at the start, and slightly closer at the end — 1.47% in the final hour, when Toyota turned up the heat to pull away a large gap over everyone else in the field.
But, in the middle stages of the race, the French car was mere tenths of a second on average off the Toyota, and, in the fourth hour was actually three tenths up a lap on average.
However, this is a flawed analysis because it is very hard to be certain what tyres each car was using and when. This isn't recorded by WEC's timing partner, Al Kamel Systems, and so it's hard to truly work this out.
Further improving the 9X8
As you might expect, the team are working behind the scenes to improve the winged 9X8.
'For us, we need to really need to have a car that is much more consistent throughout the race,' Jansonnie told reporters.
'There's too much variation on the the car balance and car performance. Depending on tire wear, track condition, the car is very picky to set up right now.
'It's complicated. What's actually complicated is to understand what should be done to try to cure those issues.
'Trying to start from some facts which you can measure and test, then develop solutions and make sure the solutions worked as they should. So, we're in this process now,' he finished.
The manufacturer has been testing new parts in Barcelona, and while Jansonnie wouldn't expand further, the implication is those parts may be future jokers applied to the car in 2025.