Peugeot Sport has revealed its hybrid hypercar for Le Mans, which will be ready to race in 2022.
The company has confirmed its Le Mans Hypercar entry will be four-wheel drive, with an electric motor making 200kW of power on the front axle and a combustion engine driving the rear wheels. Total output will be 500kW of power.
It’ll be the first time Peugeot has competed in Le Mans in just over a decade.
Peugeot design director Matthias Hossann says the company is “currently in the pre-project stage, that of studies and conception”.
While a Le Mans Hypercar is pretty far removed from Peugeot’s line-up of hatches, wagons and SUVs, there are some details that align Peugeot Sport’s racing car with regular Peugeots.
In particular, the three glowing LED fangs on each side of the front end – “claw marks” in Peugeot parlance – are reminiscent of regular Peugeots’ daytime running lights.
When Team Peugeot Total competes in the 2022 World Endurance Championship, the hypercar should go up against, among others, a Toyota’s GR Super Sport concept-based racer that’ll make its debut next year.
Also confirmed for 2021 is an entry from Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus. New hypercar regulations allow manufacturers to choose between developing a vehicle specifically for competition or modifying an existing hypercar in their line-up.
Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) regulations mandate each competitor homologate 25 engines used in competition for road use.
The new regulations also mean cars will grow compared to those in the current top tier of WEC categories, the LMP1 class. An overall length of five metres is 350mm longer than for LMP1 cars, while width is up 100mm.
