Motorsports, in all its shapes and forms, shares a common principle; “if you can’t beat them, copy them”. No surprise then that all race cars in any series tend to look the same. That is why when Peugeot Sport revealed its Le Mans Hypercar entry, the Peugeot 9X8, pundits everywhere took notice.
Dominating triple “claw” lighting elements aside, the Peugeot 9X8 is quite the looker. Particularly with its piece de resistance, a tail with no big F off rear wing. None. In its place are two vertical bargeboards that accentuate its gorgeous rear hips.
At a distance, the 9X8 bears a resemblance to the sleek and low Le Mans racers of the pre-1990s era. An era when wings were low and modest, and not the flamboyant artifices of vortices we are familiar with today.
That said, there is a reason why wings have been a fixture on every preeminent race car since the 1960s. And such devices have only grown in complexity. So, what is Peugeot’s game plan here?
Why is Peugeot making a wingless Le Mans racer?
Peugeot Sport engineers think their 2022 Hypercar contender can do without a rear wing thanks to the new LMH regulations. In a Motorsport Magazine interview, the team’s technical director, Olivier Jansonnie believes that a new “aerodynamic discovery” delivers the necessary downforce to meet the regulation’s 4:1 downforce-drag ratio.
Starting from a clean sheet design, Jansonnie said the regulations were less restrictive on the vehicle body and underfloor design. This allows them more freedom to tweak the 9X8’s unseen aerodynamic aspects and forego the ubiquitous wing. However, nobody knows for certain how this will translate into race performance until it enters the 2022 World Endurance Championship.
Currently, the team is testing the 9X8 and will only join the championship after the first round in Sebring, Florida. Jean-Marc Finot, Stellantis’ motorsport, says that the 9X8 “will make its race debut based on its level of readiness, reliability, and competitiveness”. Those last caveats will certainly bring up memories of the ill-fated Nissan GTR-LM Nismo in 2015.
Nissan’s disastrous Le Mans experiment
After two years of running experimental Deltawing race cars that went nowhere, Nissan announced that they were returning to the premier class of Le Mans – the LMP1 – in 2015. However, its 2015 challenger was unlike anything Nissan, or any other racing team had done before.
Nissan’s LMP1 racecar, christened the GT-R LM Nismo, would have a front-engine sending drive to the front wheels. Though the hybrid race prototype could send a portion of its electric power to the rear wheels, most of its power remained the purview of the front.
The GT-R LM Nismo was weird, but a glorious and ambitious departure from the norm. Unfortunately, like the DeltaWing, it sadly didn’t get very far during its only competitive outing at Le Mans.
The team’s under-preparedness and decision to drop the hybrid system resulted in all three cars failing to qualify or finish the race. Though the team developed a successor for 2016, Nissan canned the whole program by the end of 2015.
On a wing and a prayer
Like the Peugeot 9X8, Nissan tried to apply some blue-sky thinking to the tricky art of aerodynamics. Whether the GT-R LM Nismo was an undercooked concept or a steer in the wrong direction, we may never know.
Hopefully, Stellantis is pouring more resources and thought into their new Le Mans concept than Nissan did. Peugeot is the only team to dethrone a dominant incumbent at its height at Le Mans. And nothing less of a repeat of the feat is expected of the 9X8. As exciting as any new racing concept sounds in pre-season banter, we’ll only know for sure when the lights go green.