Peugeot's 6 Hours of Spa Dreams Shattered Following Unavoidable Crash with GT Car

Spinning GT Car Takes Out Pole Sitting Peugeot at SpaFIA World Endurance Championship / Twitter

After starting on pole, the No. 94 Peugeot TotalEnergies 9X8 is out of the 6 Hours of Spa following an unavoidable collision with a GT car on exit from pit road.

Malthe Jakobsen was leaving the pits on cold tires when he turned the corner to find a spinning No. 79 Iron Lynx Mercedes driven by Matteo Cressoni in his path. With no way to avoid the situation, Jakobsen ended up destroying the left front of his 9X8.

"First, I want to apologize to the team and everybody here," Jakobsen said. "It's very disappointing because you're actually in a pretty strong position going into the last couple of hours of the race. But yeah, I mean, we saw yesterday in qualifying, I made a massive mistake on coal tires already. Now, again, today, another one, those cars are very, very difficult to drive. And then a combination of the gravel, which we had from the inside of turn five, which was all over the place, and the GT car spinning in front of me, and obviously rejoining just in front, but I'm not blaming him either, because the car was out of control and he had lost it completely. But me being on the old tires, I really struggled, as well, to avoid him. And you can see you're lacking sharpness on the front compared to if you had the other tires."

From Cressoni’s side, he said that he didn’t expect a ‘dive-in’ from a Hypercar, referring to one of the two Toyota TR010s that passed him and sent him into the gravel, creating the spin.

"I didn't expect that the Hypercar to dive in the end of the straight and then put me completely on the dirt, on the gravel," Cressoni told the WEC broadcast. "I lost the car and, sorry for the Peugeot that was there, in the wrong place at the wrong moment."

Malthe Jakobsen put the No. 94 Peugeot TotalEnergies9X8 on pole for the French manufacturer's first pole in endurance racing and first pole overall since 1992.

But the Dane’s pole came after a mistake on his out lap early on in the session. Jakobsen spun off the pit road on cold tires, flat-spotting a pair. He was able to rebound in spectacular fashion, but those flat-spotted tires had the ability to throw a curveball into Peugeot TE’s plan later on in the race if they were still racing for a potential win or podium.

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