Peugeot deserve our support because they are prepared to do something different. But there's no escaping reality. All racetracks are not billiard table smooth, so a rear wing seems inevitable. Well done for trying. I hope to see them fighting for the win in 2024 with the evo.

its zero sidepod all over again :P

Having no rear wing was a great marketing excercise, it got a lot of attention! But using such a design with regulations forcing a specific downforce/drag number was too risky. It could have worked to their benefit if they could run the car really low, but they were never able to.

Honestly, I don’t care what they do in order to make their cars more competitive, even if it’s against the interesting concept they started with. As long as we get better racing then I’m happy. Of course it’s a big shame their concept didn’t work, as that would have been revolutionary like the Diesel engines of Audi, but it didn’t work out

most beautiful endurance race car EVER!

I think Peugeot started designing the 9X8 based on the very first and not definitive Hypercar regulations, and then many things changed and was too late to scrap this and redesign another one from zero (based on the final rules) and so tried to make this work optimising it as much as they could. But still, it's not totally optimal, expecially considering the fixed drag-downforce ratio, that basically deletes all the advantages a concept like this has Hope they become more competitive next year

I find pretty awesome ppl who think outta box, but, if the invention doesn't work properly and make u be competitive, there's no shame in stepping back in ur ideas. I'd love seeing Peugeot winning LM again, as it's a former winner

I love the concept without wing, but with BOP you are not rewarded for great downforce/drag numbers. I am sorry that they dig not get rewarded for it!

They went with"form over function" and learned one of the most fundamental lessons in design.

I can't help but think of this as a "maximum PR design".

Think that they have to add a rear wing for 2024. Allez, Peugeot!!!

it's interesting how the last 30 years or so, with heavy restrictions on underfloor aero in most categories, have kind of allowed it to build a reputation well beyond its (apparent) actual utility. While it's a powerful tool, it's clearly much more conditionally sensitive in a way that starts really things back once you get to the level of F1 and hypercars. that's not to say they can;t be fixed but there definitely seemed to be a prevailing sense of 'you know, we could just dump wings and do it all with ground effect' (it's probably worth pointing out that the Nissan LMP1 was considered for a wing delete at stages), but now that's coming to a bit of a bump with reality.

This concept was fun, it’s a shame that it had all the downsides of ground effect but none of the advantages due to mandated level of drag. I still think it’s great marketing though.

But as you said, wouldn’t the concept work if they redesigned the car around the 290mm and 340mm tire option since it would give them the rear grip they’re looking for as opposed to the wing? (I love the car because it goes against convention and hope they stay true to it or if they must add the wing, they should keep the ground effect)

Yes , as a long time fan of Peugeot ... Bringing back the Rear Wing can do wonders to adjust the rear down force & bringing back the Peugeot Talismatic Silver Stylized Standing Proud Lion Mascot might bring back the Good Luck & the Sportcar Heritage of Peugeot! The new lion face logo looks like an ugly big bandage & belonged to EPL or Proton! Like the Wise said : " Never Mess With a Successful & Long Standing Glamourous Mascot! " ... 🙏🕯🌎🕊🇫🇷

Peugeot thought if they drive opposite on the highway they are gonna be smart... These kind of savage ideas usually never work. Just see some from recently: Nissan LMP1 car, the Merc zero pods, the McLaren zero size concept. You just can't invent the hot water...

The Irony is so thick, you can cut it with the wing of a race car. When Marketing and styling takes over racing

Interestingly, in the era of open floor regs (pre '83) in F1, it was the FRONT WINGS that started to disappear and not the rear ones. The floor's CoP was forward far enough that more downforce was needed at the rear, plus you can use a rear wing as an extractor to pump the flow out of the tunnels. I far prefer the 905B with TWO rear wings to this naff thing with zero. 😁

Also, their low downforce / high top speed concept did not work out. They only had the 3rd highest top speed in the 2023 Le Mans race if I remember correctly. So basically most of the disadvantages of their concept with not really having the proper advantages to compensate for them.

It was a cool concept and they got a lot of marketing for it, but the best kind of PR for a manufacturer is actually winning. If that means going with a rear wing, that's fine by me. I want as many cars competitive for the win as realistically possible and the sad truth of motoracing prototypes is that not all concepts are born equal. Just look at F1 with the RB philosophy vs the Ferrari/Mercedes ones. Still, kudos for trying and showing us something different, shame it didn't work out.

I really think that Peugeot should not be allowed to change aero right before or maybe 1 race before Le Mans. While all all races count, the 24h of Le Mans are the main attraction. So the FIA and ACO should be able to as much data as possible to get the best possible BoP. I hope they can bring the update to the 1st race or even to the pre-season test.

I'll have to be honest: I think Peugeot could have choose a different concept for the 9X8 with a wing included, instead of a "we didn't want a rear wing" concept. But here we are, I guess the 9X8 might have a 29/34 tire option. I definitely think they could have heard about the 905 and the 908. Both cars were Le Mans winners at the time and also have success. Fortunately, the 9X8 actually had a podium at the 6 Hours of Monza this year, so it was a great race. But I do hope Peugeot will actually be a serious competitor in the next year's season, probably with a 9X8 Evo 2.

You should post more videos. Love your channel

00:38 - for a moment the big Sign at the Back looked like a wing..

I am by no means a race car design expert or anything but I am *quite* a huge fan of designing race cars, watching them race etc, but I am not the biggest enthusiast you will see around. In my opinion, it was fine not going with a rear wing to experiment different things, once in a while you kinda want to explore your options and learn what works and what does not work. However, frankly speaking, reliable downforce is always the biggest, most important thing that more racing car manufacturers look for, so I would say it is kinda shocking that peugeot wanted to rely only underbody downforce alone to generate the necessary downforce and not use a rear wing to generate the more reliable overbody downforce. While this reduces drag, but at the same time there is a minimum(?) amount of drag that the car must have, which completely makes the drag reduction meaningless. This design could have worked if they have the option to really push the underbody downforce as much as possible, by using things like active adjustable venturi tunnels underneath the body(basically a DRS, but it's not allowed). Either way, I can respect peugeot for doing this but I personally do fail to see the merits of doing this(maybe someone can tell me more about this). However, I must also say, I really feel like the LMH class cars are really super screwed over by the regulations, I really wished that the regulations for LMH isn't so tight and it is more free(similar to LMP1 rules). Basically, I was shocked to find out how much LMH cars weight when compared to LMP1 cars, and the power restriction of the engine is also limited to 500 kW(actually this is still fine because most LMP1 cars were running at slightly lower engine power output than this), but the way they restricted the hybrid power is just kinda too much IMO, making it so that the hybrid power can only be deployed at higher speeds means that you are running at only ICE for quite some time(I would say maybe 30% of the time? since most of the track you can still go at 135 km/h and above), also the fact that they limited the power of the hybrid system to 200 kW is also quite limiting to be honest. LMP1 cars ran at 1000 HP(combining both hybrid and ICE) or more and was much lighter compared to LMH. LMH is running at most 700 kW(940 HP) only. My point is that I hope that they can make it so that the hybrid power can be deployed at lower speeds or at least increase the output of hybrid power(again this is just my opinion).

Is the front tyre width part of the reason they were so much better in wet conditions?

I called it when they released the car that they would eventually use a conventional wing. You limit your setup options so much without the ability to change downforce levels on the rear without having to change rake angle.

During the 8 hours of Bahrain the commentators were hinting that the annoucement of a new car was imminent or something like that...

With Peugeot doing an Eco version for next year, “if” Glickenhaus were to do an SCG007 Evo (which Jim Glickenhaus said the car needed if they were to compete in the future) what do you reckon it would’ve looked like?

the 9x8 will be ready for the second race of the season how i now don't worry

They finally threw in the towel & realized it just couldn't be done. As we all are learning more & more about Ground effects ( thanx to F1 current era..) not easy creating a racecar with this kind of concept for Aeroeficiency. Specially Peugeot's no wing to top it off.

As we've seen in F1, maximizing ground effect requires a very sophisticated suspension combined with an overbody that balances it out. I'm not sure this is possible with the hypercar regs. Even the RB19 has suffered on very bumpy circuits where they've had to raise the ride height.

hey padre 👋 3:55

One of their promotion videos, they glossed over a render of the 9x8 with a rear wing a while back

It's funny, how, when the LMH rules were published, all the experts said that the aero target figures were "extremely conservative" and so easy to reach that manufacturers will be able to have road hypercar-like designs and will further have to come up with draggy features to stay within the rules. But in the end every single LMH car looks like an LMP with some extremely reluctant efforts to introduce non-LMP design features to stand out. Would an Aston-Lola LMP1 look out of place here? Or an LMP2-based Mazda DPi? Worse so in LMDh, where Acura didn't even bother fully covering the nosebox with bodywork (again). The 9X8, the one car that strayed further from the LMP norm-even though it still has the characteristic narrow greenhouse, very low bodywork between the wheels and cockpit, and vented front fenders-was the one to underperform! This peculiar kind of BoP was introduced specifically to bring visual and conceptual variety to the field, to ensure that same cars can race both in WEC and IMSA (convergence) as well as to limit costs and avoid a development race. There's every indication that it has been at best a partial success on all 3 objectives. No LMH manufacturer voiced plans of racing in IMSA in the foreseeable future. Designs are highly convergent. The development race is on, and with a tendency for further uniformity i.e. "Evo" versions are coming soon and will look even more alike. Don't get me started on the engine configurations. ACO, FIA and IMSA had one last shot at these rules and I'm afraid they missed. While I'll very much enjoy this final era of sportscar racing, the last hurrah, there's a lingering feeling of an opportunity missed.

I think Peugeot should ask Adrian Newey about ground effect

Finally, Peugeot is going to bring a car designed by engineers, not by marketing people

Which type of rear wing you think they'll end up using?

It's a shame that ideas like this get pushed to the side. Clearly between theory (and CFD) and reality, there's an eternity of engineering headaches. I hope the wing remains low level and not the enormous things we've seen on the other prototypes, this out of the box thinking is what makes WEC more fun than F1

Defintely a wing is on the way. Given that there's more entries next year with the sunsetting of LMP. The lessons and data hopefully will count for something in the development of the EVO version. Random question does brands competting in IMSA have a development advantage in WEC? If so Porsche, Cadillac and BMW would be the ones to look out for in 2024.

I don't really blame them. Plenty experienced F1 teams mucked up the ground effect format. Stuff like this happens

Yes, add a wing, it didn't work well without one.

The batmobile dosent exi-

So the entire reason the best looking car didn't work is the FIA kept haphazardly changing the rules. This way LMH is being handled is really shameful.

They chose to center their car around an interesting design to generate buzz but its time to pivot and put a wing on

I could be wrong maybe they’ll have a tiny wing I think they’re gonna try making a spoiler Work

At the end of the day you design the car to the regulations. But I can't help but think these regulations that require a maximum L/D, limited ability to set up a car, impose hybrid powertrains to manufacturers but forbid their use in (essentially) their most useful and impactful phase of a lap are non sensical. In my opinion Peugeot have drawn the short straw by designing what would otherwise be a very smart racecar but cannot utilise the concept to its fullest extent because of the rules in place. They are guilty of designing a car that is off subject that cannot thrive under the present conditions. I believe the success of the current ruleset for LMH has a lot more to do with the tight budgetary restrictions rather than the overbearing rules. And that for the long term, these rules must be loosened if Le Mans is to continue to be a driver for innovation in street cars as it so often has been. As for adding a rear wing or updating the car to better suit the conditions, you can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. I believe Peugeot need a completely new car that is not so ride height dependent and less reliant on its hybrid powertrain to win, even if it means more dirty downforce and a less efficient powertrain. But I'm just a random guy on the internet.

This is the same problem as the Nissan program, people who don't have real world racing experience start running marketing exercise level racing programs. They all end up learning the hard way and that is sad considering the manufacturer is know for high quality programs in the past.

They should hire newey from f1 to make success without rear wing

Why wouldn't you want a wing in a RWD race car?

Peugeot finally admitted the 9X8 failed

For sure a great design and one of the nicest looking hypercars but man what a complete marketing disaster... How they couldn' t imagine?

A wing is an advertising billboard, nuff said. That's racing folks! It's not a sport -- it's marketing. Period. Or it wouldn't exist.

Park the 9x8 in a deep hole on top of the delta wing.

They say no rear wing..and yes there isn’t but yet the whole rear half of the car body is sculpted /scooped and even the rear lip has an angle to it…not exactly smooth and flat like say the McLaren Longtail

It would have worked on a smooth race track... but there are almost no smooth ones out there.. the bumps and uneven surface, just stalls and disrupts the groundeffect... Perfect on paper... not so much in real life..

It seems that the shortcomings of BOP do not deter enough fans or entrants to kill the series and I find this surprising and interesting. The variables that this idea introduces are so gross that it makes the racing completely uninteresting to me. The degree of arbitrariness in the handicapping, and no ill intentions implied, is a deal breaker but if racing excites you, details be damned, then you're the target audience. Perhaps I'm missing something but I don't know how else to view it. I really like Peugeot and .seeing them in a proper racing series would be wonderful.

Peugeot should borrow the floor from Red Bulls RB19. Maybe then they really could afford not having a wing, lol or perhaps a small spoiler.

they need new turbo

Hmm🤔 I suppose top gear was right about pugut ...😁

Until Alpine F1 get their heads around ground effect and Peugeot steal some employee's from them, they should go back to basics with a rear wing using knowledge already available

This is a failure EXACTLY like the Lotus 80. The history just repeats itself.

I hope engineers knew that no rear wing was trash idea, but couldn't do anything to oppose marketing team. otherwise peugeot just have dumbest engineers team.

This thing is so ugly it makes a Pontiac Aztek look like a beauty queen. It was a nice try, but imo they should scrap it and start over.