Team Peugeot TotalEnergies might have flattered to deceive in the TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps earlier this month, but the French manufacturer could nonetheless take away plenty of positives from its most convincing display of the season so far.
Peugeot arrived in the Ardennes with just a pair of ninth-place finishes to its credit from the opening two rounds of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship campaign in Qatar and Italy. Following a competitive run throughout free practice in Belgium, however, home hero Stoffel Vandoorne put the #94 9X8 Hypercar fourth on the grid in the Hyperpole top ten shootout in qualifying, with stablemate Jean-Éric Vergne in the #93 entry in close company in seventh.
Loïc Duval and Paul di Resta were the men at the wheel for the start of the race, and both produced a spectacular show for the record-breaking 98,874-strong crowd as they engaged in intense duels with rivals Ferrari, Alpine and BMW – the Scot unleashing a string of purple first sector times as he worked his way up to fourth.
Towards the end of his period in the cockpit, di Resta took advantage of the top three getting caught up in traffic following a safety car intervention to slice past eventual winner Antonio Giovinazzi into third. Not to be outdone, shortly after, Duval deftly threaded the needle between the #51 Ferrari and Robin Frijns’ BMW while travelling at more than 300km/h on the Kemmel Straight as the trio navigated slower LMGT3 cars, in so doing jumping two spots from sixth to fourth behind his team-mate.
Vergne and FIA WEC newcomer Malthe Jakobsen were next to head into battle, but a series of mid-race events would ultimately dash Peugeot’s Belgian bid. When the safety car reappeared for an LMGT3 category accident, the #93 did not come into the pits – unlike the majority of its Hypercar competitors. While that catapulted Vergne into the lead, it also left him vulnerable should there be any further interruption.
There was. The safety car was scrambled again four hours in, effectively ‘gifting’ Peugeot’s adversaries a free pit visit and dropping the #93 – which had been obliged to stop a few laps earlier – to the tail of the field. At much the same time, contact between Jakobsen and Frijns at the end of the Kemmel Straight damaged the #94’s suspension – putting the car out of the race before qualifying star Vandoorne had even had chance to take to the track.
“I had a good start, but my first stint was frustrating because I kept catching GTs at the worst places for overtaking,” mused Duval. “In my second, shorter stint, I felt the tyres degrading. Finally, in my last stint, we had good pace on the new tyres and it felt good to be fighting at the front.”
Mikkel Jensen ultimately brought the #93 entry home in 11th place, barely half-a-second shy of the points, meaning Peugeot left the event with which it shares a title partner empty-handed – but buoyed by its performance as it looks ahead next to its home race, the 93rd edition of the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans on 14-15 June.
“It was a very disappointing result as we had the speed to do much better,” reflected Peugeot Sport Technical Director, Olivier Jansonnie. “We decided to split the strategies of the two cars midway through to cover all options, but we weren’t able to capitalise on the safety car opportunity with the #93.
“The #94 was better-placed, but it was caught up in an incident and a suspension part broke following contact with another car. The positive is that we had good pace in qualifying and during the race – a potential we’ll try to convert at Le Mans.”
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