Catching Up With: Jean-Marc Finot

With the new Peugeot Sport 9X8s set to make their competitive debut this weekend there are plenty of questions that can now be asked about the programme and its initial and longer term objectives.

DSC made a start on that process with a couple of interviews at the media launch of the race-ready car at Portimao in May.

Here’s the first – with Senior VP of Stellantis Motorsport Jean-Marc Finot who has the overall responsibility for sporting programmes across all of the conglomerate’s 14 brands worldwide:

Jean-Marc, will this car we are seeing here be one of those that race at Monza?

“No, the two cars for Monza will both be new cars – the test car we have here is going to continue as the test car with more testing, including endurance testing, still planned.

“It is a significant challenge to get all of the parts (and spares) that we need in the current (supply chain and logistics) situation. Bear in mind we are talking about a car with 2500-3000 parts.

“It’s a significantly smaller challenge than for our road car production where those numbers rise into the millions, but developing the supply chain for such a specialist car is still very tough, that’s why we have taken purchasing in-house to the race team.”

How many chassis do you intend to build for the programme?

“It will depend on what could happen. But we think from eight to 12.”

Are there any plans to race more than two cars anywhere?

“For the time being the framework of our programme is for just two cars.

“But, if we have the opportunity to register one more, it’s open. For the time being our framework, and our budget, is a programme of two cars.”

There was talk about the potential for this car in future years perhaps being used by other Stellantis brands either in the FIA WEC or in IMSA. Is that still a possibility?

“It is still a possibility. For the time being, nothing is scheduled. But it’s still open and we could have the opportunity to engage with several brands in Championships. So we have to match with the needs of the brands in terms of marketing and communications, which markets.

“But it’s still open as we think that these regulation will have a long life.

“It won’t be next year. But as we have 14 brands. I think we could have many opportunities.”

Talking about the Peugeot, not a brand that’s in the United States at the moment, but they do have some very big races with some very big audiences worldwide. Is there any appeal at all in doing a one-off for let’s say, a Rolex 24 in the future?

“It could be considered, it would be a way to get more experience and also for marketing, communications and with visibility. Nothing is decided, nothing is scheduled. But it’s open and maybe in a year’s time we could participate in one of these famous races.”

A factory programme is designed to do a great deal of things. One of which, of course, is marketing based, plus the promotion, the technology, the engineering and the innovation of your cars.

Another thing though is to use the programme as a motivational tool within the company and your dealer network?

“What we have to keep in mind is that there are two propositions for (factory) motosport programmes.

“They are: marketing possibilities, and against this framework we have some competitors for that budget like advertising on TV for the Peugeot brand, sponsoring an event such as the Roland Garros for example and we have to prove that motorsport is a competitive marketing investment. That’s one part.

“The second part is the technological laboratory to promote a new technology, new development tools, new skill sets that we will need or we are already needing for our road legal cars.

“So we are working on all of these to show that the monetary investment is strong, that the competitiveness of the car and the efficiency of our investment is protecting the sustainability of motorsports.

“Everybody in the team is conscious that as long as we have good effectiveness, motorsport is sustainable.

“Some OEMs that have spent a lot in motorsport over a short period of time have found their spending was too much and leave straight away.

“That’s not our strategy, our strategy is to have a long term investment in motorsport, but in an efficient way.

“As for the technology demonstration from the car. We had a choice between two sets of technical regulations: LMDH and LMH.

“LMDH was attractive as it is easier. You buy a car (the spine) off the shelf, you just have to put one of your internal combustion engine inside. It seems very attractive. But for us, it didn’t make sense. We wanted to put the design code of the Peugeot brand on our car with more freedom than the LMDH regulations allowed.

“Also, many parts on the LMDH are standard (across the various OEM brands that use this ruleset) and, with our partnership with TotalEnergies, it was paramount to develop the new batteries cells ourselves, the first output from our new joint venture company is actually the batteries on the 9X8.

“Beyond that the same team of engineers that have developed the 508 PSE (Peugeot Sport Engineered) road car worked on the powertrain systems, hybrid drive and four wheel drive of the 9X8.”

So the planned life of this car is aligned to the length of the regulatory cycle?

“It is a multi-year commitment from Peugeot yes.”