24 Hours of Le Mans: Team Peugeot TotalEnergies in the leading group

·      An action-packed start

·      Team Peugeot TotalEnergies in the leading group after 6 hours of racing

·      The rain arrived on track after 3 hours

The 24 Hours of Le Mans Centenary is on!

Lebron James, NBA living legend, waved the tricolour flag to give the start to the 62 competitors of this 91th edition, 4th round of the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship. Paul Di Resta, at the wheel of the #93 9X8 PEUGEOT and Nico Müller in the #94 PEUGEOT 9X8 took the start in front of hundreds of thousands of fans.

The first six hours of the race were action-packed with a lot of incidents on track leading to the first safety car only a few minutes after the green flag. At the restart, the #93 PEUGEOT 9X8 was 8th followed by the #94 on 10th on a track with different grips. The two drivers where then consistent reaching top speeds of 336 km/h (#94) and 329 km/h (#93) before handing the car over to Jean-Eric Vergne and Gustavo Menezes.

In the third hour, a second safety car was deployed due to heavy rain on a part of the track and causing a lot of accidents with cars going off-track. This safety car thus allowed Team Peugeot TotalEnergies to take the lead of the race.

The following hours were as agitated as the first ones and the Team Peugeot TotalEnergies is staying in the rhythm of the leading pack. After six hours of racing, Loïc Duval, at the wheel of the #94 PEUGEOT 9X8 is in third position. The #93, which went out of the track earlier in the race is in 12th position at 22h, driven by Mikkel Jensen.

Jean-Marc Finot – Stellantis Motorport Senior VP: « I think that three elements will be key for the success of the race: the rhythm, managing the race incidents and the reliability of the cars. We can see that in terms of rhythm we are close to the one we had during the free practices, and we are in the same window as the other competitors. Concerning the race incidents, we had some positive and negative events, so we have to stay focussed not to make any mistakes. Finally, about the reliability of the cars we are glad that we raced for 6 hours without any alerts, but the race is still long.”

Jean-Eric Vergne – PEUGEOT #93: « I had a really long first stint, the conditions were not very good, and it was tricky to stay on track which I could not. I came out with new tyres, it was the right strategy, but I just lost the car in Mulsanne, I spun and then the engine stopped, and I had to do different resets to have it back again so I lost a lot of time. Then when I came back, during my last stint, on the dry I was feeling really good, I was with the Ferrari on track and it was feeling pretty solid.”

Nico Müller – PEUGEOT #94 : « I had a clean start of the race which was the main goal. It was super tricky, because from Tertre Rouge to the second chicane it was really wet but we kept it clean and that’s the most important. The rhythm was pretty decent as I could keep up with the guys in front. The car feels ok so far without any major issues so it’s good. We are still hanging on in there, the race is very long so we just have to keep going, have a clean one and then we will see.”