Jean-Eric Vergne insisted that he and the Peugeot Sport crew left nothing on the desk on the way in which to fifteenth place within the opening qualifying session, 5 locations off the cut-off for the Hyperpole closing.
He added that solely a small enchancment would have been doable with out the purple flag two minutes earlier than the top of the preliminary interval of qualifying.
“As a crew, we did an excellent job and we extracted probably the most from the automobile,” he informed Autosport.
“With out the purple flag, we’d have had two or three-tenths, however nowhere close to what we wanted to be in Hyperpole.
“It was a form of a second the place you exit the automobile and you’re scratching your head on what to enhance to go quicker.
“The automobile steadiness was nice, the crew did a terrific job all weekend to offer me a superb automobile in quali – by way of driving it felt superb.”
The 2 Peugeot 9X8 2024 Le Mans Hypercars have been a second and a half off the tempo of Antonio Fuoco within the pole-winning Ferrari 499P LMH within the opening 12-minute session.
That hole grew to greater than two seconds as soon as Fuoco improved by seven-tenths within the 10-minute Hyperpole session.
Stoffel Vandoorne was barely the faster of the 2 Peugeot drivers, his 1m31.651s, a tenth up on Vergne’s, 1m31.748s, placing him 14th.
The inference from Vergne’s feedback is that there’s nonetheless work to do on the Steadiness of Efficiency for the revised 9X8 making its debut this weekend in Italy.
#93 Peugeot Totalenergies Peugeot 9X8: Mikkel Jensen, Nico Muller, Jean-Eric Vergne
Photograph by: Paul Foster
It follows an admission of shock from Peugeot Sport technical boss Olivier Jansonnie on the BoP for the 9X8 at Imola.
He described the BoP for the 9X8 as “robust”, whereas stressing that Peugeot trusts within the processes of the rule makers, the FIA and the Vehicle Membership de l’Ouest.
Vergne harassed that Peugeot’s job in Sunday’s Imola 6 Hours might be to execute the proper race.
“Whatever the efficiency we have to end the race and say we’ve executed the whole lot proper, made the appropriate calls, had good pitstop technique, and as drivers made no errors, been good on tyre administration and aggressive once we wanted to be,” he mentioned.
“Now we have to take this race very critically as a result of the day we’ve the automobile to win we have to be prepared and we have to be good.
“We’re going to attempt to race perfection tomorrow no matter the place we find yourself.”