Club Arnage

Sandbagging or gently telling us to not get our hopes up too much for a non Audi win.......

From Autosport.

Peugeot: 908 not ready for Le Mans

Peugeot believe that their car is not yet ready for the Le Mans 24 Hours despite the car taking a second consecutive victory in the Le Mans Series last weekend.

Pedro Lamy and Stephane Sarrazin took their first win with the new car at Valencia, but the second car of Nicolas Minassian and Marc Gene was forced to retire with gearbox problems.

Peugeot's technical director Bruno Famin said: "The race revealed that we haven't yet solved all our problems.

"We continue to be on the limit in certain areas, and also that we still aren't ready to hold for 24 hours."

However, Famin believes that the race served as a good test for the French race, which is the next event for the new car.

"As we had hoped, it proved to be a first class full-scale test for us," he said. "It was an extremely positive weekend."

The team had also experienced gearbox dramas in the opening race of the season at Monza, although both cars did make it to the finish first time out.

Well, I hope to see some competition at Le Mans - at least for a couple of hours... Many of us waiting for a non-Audi win, and that includes me, but I still see Audi as the clear favourite. They have Le Mans experience since 1999 and have experience running a diesel prototype for more than a year now.

OK, Peugeot won in 1992/1993, but that's loooong time ago and they haven't built a sportscar since then. So let's not expect too much from them, I expect more in 2008

The car has certainly got the pace but that Riccardo box looks like the weak link. I have a £50 bet that with a mate that there will be no Pugs left by the time we take up our traditional  residence at Tetre Rouge at 2am.   
On the other hand cast your minds back to 1984 when Audi ruled the roost in the WRC. Along came Peugoet with the 205 T16 and won 1st time out. Audi never caught up despite throwing fortunes at the Quattro. Could history repeat itself? Those boys don't do things by half.

I'm not surprised that the Peugeot isn't quite ready for Le Mans yet, assuming this isn't merely a put-up job designed to make people merely think that.

1000km races are one thing, but to run for the full 24 hours, given the much greater demands imposed on the machine, is a different matter.

It'll certainly be interesting to see how they do in pre qualifying and in the race itself, come June.

Nobody really knows sometimes ya get lucky and keep running while supposedly infallable car's break, we've all seen it before down the years, And I totally agree once we get some good racing albeit maybe only for a few hours then all the better this years Lemans will be for it. Maybe the Pugs will push hard enough in the first few hours to push the Audis to breaking point and pescarolo might sneak through (dreaming i think!!!)

This just shows the fun and games have begun bring it on for june. The psychological race has already started now lets get the real race going on the tarmac.

They would be a lot further along had they been ready (and balsy) enough to take on Sebring.

Not the event, or the Audi's... but the track.

Got gearbox problems, they'll show in a RACE at Sebring.
trouble with breaks, yep that'll show up as well..

my point, as always, is that the best place to learn is in the heat of competition,
not repititious testing. not enough variables to make it a realistic simulation.

... well that's my two bits.   -Lee

it is about racing isn't it?

Hi Lee,
         I am with you Lee. They should have run at Sebring just as they should run at Le Mans. Hoping for more heat at Le Mans than Sebring this year.
Phil