Peugeot’s return to the WEC in mid-2022 was marked by an ambitious challenge: the 9X8, a car characterized by an extreme aerodynamic concept, entirely based on the ground effect.
A concept, enclosed in the motto "We didn’t want a rear wing" imprinted on the car, that could be "high-risk high-reward", but that soon turned into a disaster on 4 wheels.
In this article we will try to analyze the problems of this project, while the attention moves towards the expected presentation of the new evolved car, scheduled for March 25th.
9X8, a Troubled path
Before going into the technical details, it is necessary to make a brief summary of the path of the current 9X8, from its debut in Monza to today.
Since the first presentation of the concept in May 2021, the project has represented a breakthrough in the world of hypercars with its bold absence of rear wing, embracing an aerodynamic concept radically different from other cars in its category.
The goal of the house of the lion was to create a car capable of generating downforce entirely from the bottom of the car through ground effect, as in modern Formula 1 cars, in order to obtain "clean" load with minimal aerodynamic resistance. This approach aimed to ensure optimal performance along the endless straights and fast turns of Le Mans, which is the real final goal of the project.
Peugeot has already done a huge amount of development work, which has led to several aerodynamic appendices on the car, especially in the rear.
Once the final details have been completed, it’s time for the debut: September 10, 2022, 6 hours of Monza.
All eyes are on the futuristic gray-black hypercar.
But no one could have imagined such a disastrous debut.
From the first laps, the two hypercars of Peugeot are hammered by technical problems. In fact, the #93 does not even manage to score a good time in qualifying due to an unspecified "glitch" of the system that forces it to the pits.
And during the race, the situation does not improve. Mikkel Jensen, driving the #93 car, is forced to give up after only 25 minutes of the race (on an expected duration of 6 hours, nothing but endurance), with the car stopping exactly at the beginning of the pit lane after an electronic reset on track, giving us a tragicomic scene. The sister #94, although plagued by other problems, manages at least to complete the race, but ends in 33rd place overall and 25 laps from the winner.
Okay, they could be youth issues, surely they will improve in the next races...right? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is a brutal "no" that comes as a slap in the face to Transalpine technicians: between the end of 2022 and 2023 both 9X8 will continue to be bombarded by reliability problems and a chronic lack of race pace, even with an extremely favorable BOP.
Vain attempts
Despite the switch from electric to hydraulic gearbox actuators, which from Portimao last season has solved many of the reliability problems, and a good performance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the poor results achieved in the subsequent races in Monza, Fuji and Bahrain have raised the white flag to the engineers led by Olivier Jansonnie: starting from the 6 hours of Imola 2024, the 9X8 will change radically and will align more with the concepts seen by the other cars.
Ironically, the only race in which the "wingless" 9X8 showed a great pace was the 1812km of Qatar, the last one before the introduction of the new evolution.
But despite the good pace, here too the epilogue is disastrous: while being in second place, the #93 runs out of fuel just 5 minutes from the end, only to be disqualified for trying to restart using the hybrid system.
This good pace in the race was therefore only a faint ray of light in an extremely difficult period for Peugeot, which has invested huge resources in the project. The decision to evolve the design was therefore inevitable, although met with some regret in the light of initial hopes.
After this necessary summary, we can finally ask the fateful question: why did the project not work?
An eye on the rulebook
In order to be able to respond, we must first take a look at the LMH technical regulation, trying to understand what led Peugeot to meet such an extreme concept.
And if you read the entire regulation, you can easily understand the reason behind this choice, which is the great design freedom left to the engineers.
This flexibility led the French car manufacturer to dare with an extreme concept, convinced that it could lead to significant advantages on the track.
Why are we talking about freedom?
Because the regulation allows manufacturers to develop the car with few constraints, from the architecture of the thermal engine to the hybrid system, from the chassis to the suspension, up to aerodynamics.
Focus on aerodynamics
On this last point it is necessary to make some clarifications.
In fact, it must be specified that the only constraint present in this area is the ratio between aerodynamic load and overall resistance of the vehicle, which must not exceed 4:1 in any condition, to vary by any parameter of the car (speed, roll, pitch, yaw, etc.).
This means being able to develop the aerodynamic map regardless of the shape of the car, unlike F1 where the latter are strictly regulated, and consequently offers the possibility of pushing towards innovative and completely new concepts.
Simulations are not pure gold
The problem with all these innovations is that if you go wrong and there is no correlation between simulation data and track, it can come back to your teeth like a boomerang, Mercedes W13 style, just to give a recent example.
And that’s probably what happened to Peugeot.
But why, if the data in the tunnel are good, once you put the wheels on track the car does not go?
We must consider that the data coming out of the wind tunnel and CFD simulations are not always accurate: they come from tests done in "ideal" situations, often very far from the real ones of the track, where wind, dirty air, bumps, ups and downs and curbs constantly change and in a way not quite predictable the air flow that runs over the car, and consequently the balance of the car.
And probably the excellent data from the simulations deceived the French technicians, who once on track had to deal with the harsh reality.
Keyword: stability
Analyzing one of the main problems of the Peugeot 9X8, as well as the reliability, emerges too much sensitivity to changes in height from the ground, which often and willingly led to excessive bouncing and in some cases even triggered porpoising.
Why this? To better understand, you need to understand how the ground effect works.
Simplifying to the maximum: at the slightest variation of the height from the ground (following passage on bumps or curbs for example) the French cars
suffered an imbalance of the air pressure under the car. This led to an instantaneous loss of aero load and consequently to a decrease in the performance of the car.
Loss of load that is less impactful on 'traditional' hypercars, in the same conditions.
And here the words of Ferdinando Cannizzo, technical manager of the Ferrari 499P project come to mind: "The rules set limit values for load and aerodynamic resistance that the car must comply with in all conditions of use. [...] We need to make the aerodynamic map as consistent as possible in all conditions, from slow to fast curves," the engineer told formulapassion.it at the start of the 2023 season.
And comparing the results of Peugeot and Ferrari, we honestly can’t blame him.
Other problems
The French manufacturer also has difficulties in slow curves because of the ground effect, which requires high speeds to work properly.
These difficulties therefore had to be treated with "compromise" setup choices, often outside the optimal window, thus reflecting on the management of the tires and the rest of the car.
Another major problem of the 9X8 is the maximum speed. This may sound like a nonsense, considering that the car had the most powerful engine in the group and a philosophy designed to ensure little aerodynamic drag, but probably, reconnecting to the topic we just discussed, is also attributable to the overall not optimal configuration.
Could Peugeot have done something?
After examining the main problems of the project, we ask ourselves this fundamental question.
It is important to stress that all possible efforts have been made, and the use of development tokens is the last resort to improve a project in obvious difficulty.
It should also be noted that the initial approval phase of the French hypercar was not entirely simple, due to some regulation changes during the process.
Changes to which Peugeot did not have time to react, and among these, the width of the rear wheels emerges as a crucial element that influenced the performance of the car.
The French manufacturer has in fact approved a car with 4 tires of the same diameter, maintaining a balance more shifted towards the front (in part to balance the problems in the slow curves above).
On the contrary, Ferrari and Toyota have been able to homologate cars with wider rear wheels, allowing better power management and less loss of traction, another great Achilles heel of the 9X8.
A reduction of the sensitivity to the height from the ground could instead be obtained through the installation of inerters (devices that allow to travel to more constant heights) in the suspension scheme, but these elements are prohibited by the technical regulation.
Now the focus of the French company is totally on the new evolved car, which will be presented later today, March 25.
The new model, although retaining the innovative concept of the ground effect, will introduce important changes aimed at improving the overall stability and efficiency of the car. With the addition of a rear wing and wider rear wheels, as well as an internal redistribution of weights and balance, the new 9X8 promises to align more closely with traditional concepts of other hypercars, while ensuring its distinctive identity and innovative ambition.
The new direction of the project aims to find a balance between audacity and engineering solidity, incorporating the experience gained in the initial phase of the project and a pragmatic vision oriented to success on the track.
And we, as enthusiasts, can only hope that their great efforts will be rewarded by a newfound competitiveness.
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