Peugeot frustrated after early Le Mans qualifying exit

Peugeot left Wednesday evening’s Le Mans qualifying with clear frustration after both of its Hypercars were eliminated in the first of three sessions, a sharp downturn after recent outings in which the team had been closer to the front.

Peugeot falls short in home qualifying

That left Peugeot 1.8s and 2.5s respectively away from the benchmark 3:23.135 set by Ferdinand Habsburg in the #35 Alpine. For the wider qualifying picture, Alpine’s pace at the front underlined the contrast, with more on that session available here: Alpine edges Cadillac in Le Mans qualifying.

"So it’s extremely frustrating, but that’s racing. So we don’t give up. We’ve got a race to prepare, qualifying is not everything of course, but you can imagine…"

Pace deficit spread across the lap

Asked where Peugeot was losing time, Esnault pointed to a broad performance shortfall rather than a single obvious weakness.

"It’s across the lap basically. But it’s the same package, the same people, the same car as we had over the past two races," he said.

Both Peugeot drivers changed tyres during the 30-minute session as the team searched for grip and lap time. Vandoorne used two sets of mediums in the #93, while Jakobsen began on softs before switching to mediums after a mid-session pit stop. Neither approach delivered the step required to escape elimination.

The result means Peugeot will not progress to Hyperpole 1, where the 15 non-eliminated Hypercars will continue before a further five are cut ahead of the final top-10 pole shootout.

Race focus turns to survival and opportunity

There was one limited consolation: Peugeot’s gap was smaller than last year’s Le Mans qualifying, when its fastest car was 2.2s off the pace. Esnault, however, made clear that was not enough for a manufacturer carrying Peugeot’s expectations.

"We cannot be happy with that… it’s not the way we want to race," he said.

Looking ahead, Esnault’s message was pragmatic. From the back, Peugeot’s race must be built on execution, clean operations and opportunism.

"The key point now starting from the back is to survive," he said. "We’ve got nothing to lose. Let’s be clever. Let’s prepare the car properly, and put the drivers in the right mindset."