Peugeot are surely WEC’s most confusing brand. The begin by gloating about their no-wing concept, and utterly fail. Sheepishly, they add one in 2024 but not after dominating that year’s Qatar 1812KM only losing their first win due to electrical issues suffered at the start of the final lap. Since then, they’ve been yo-yoing from genuinely threatening at COTA and Fuji last year to more familiar languishing performances of Imola or Bahrain.

So in 2026, what are Peugeot going to be? I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you what they need:

Consistency.

It evaded them last year, and you never quite knew where to rank them as a result. You wonder if the team behind the project, Bob Berridge Motorsport (BBM Sport) themselves knew, because I certainly didn’t. But it would be a lie to say they’ve never had such a commodity. They were consistent in 2024, but for all the wrong reasons. While they may have gradually picked up the pace, they didn’t score better than eighth place until the final two rounds of the season, and were down in sixth place finish in the manufacturer’s standings, only beating the single-car entry of Cadillac and Lamborghini’s nightmarish effort in their only WEC season. For a manufacturer who are seemingly so committed to the series, it’s not a great advertisement.

But last year they notably improved on occasion, and seemed to finally understand the package they’d been trying to perfect since 2022. Two podium finishes helped contribute to their best points total ever, albeit being ranked 7th in a more competitive manufacturers championship. The hope will be they can outscore themselves for the second year running, and to do it they’ve called upon new talent.

As Mikkel Jensen leaves for McLaren’s own LMDh operation and Jean-Eric Vergne leaves the team, in come Hypercar debutants Nick Cassidy and Theo Pourchaire to help boost the team to what they hope will be greater heights.

Both are inspired, if risky, signings on the face of it. Pourchaire’s an F2 champion who has failed to find consistency in his own career since, with six-race Indycar endevour and a single Super Formula race. In 2025 he tried his luck in the European Le Mans Series with Algarve Pro Racing, yet could only muster 7th in the final LMP2 standings. Not a brilliant debut season, but it could’ve been worse. Even so, the 22-year-old caught the eye of Peugeot who gave him a drive at the final round of 2025’s WEC campaign, where he performed modestly on debut. A long career is surely ahead of him, and if he learns quickly and finds his feet sooner rather than later a good stint at Peugeot could be the reward.

His benchmark for this season will of course be his teammates, but perhaps the most relevant yardstick here is the other man Peugeot have brought into the fold for 2026: Nick Cassidy may well be another Hypercar rookie, but with plenty of Formula E experience and a Super GT title – which utilize extensive aerodynamics and hybrid technology – he could well turn out to be a shrewd signing from Peugeot.

As for the rest, there is some greater consistency, with Pourchaire slotting into the #94 alongside Danish progidy Malthe Jakobsen and Loic Duval, while Cassidy bolsters the #93 with Stoffel Vandoorne and Paul Di Resta.

As for this year, I’m not expecting them to light the world on fire, but I do like the direction they’re heading in. That being said, the first three tracks of 2025 are historically ones in which they’ve struggled, so a good start will be necessary if they are to find the front of the field more often in 2026.

image credit: MarcelX42, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons