Peugeot 9X8 sports new colors for the 2026 WEC season

The two Peugeot 9X8 that will compete in the 2026 season of the World Endurance Championship will sport a completely new color scheme. The combination of white, red, and black replaces the green and white that identified the team in recent seasons, taking inspiration from the colors Peugeot used on the 205 GTi from 1984.

Peugeot Design and Peugeot Sport jointly designed the new livery, which incorporates gradient lines as a reinterpretation of the three-claw motif present in all Peugeot models. The presentation took place this Wednesday, February 26th, at the Atelier Vendôme in Paris, and the cars will run with this look for the first time at the 1812 km of Qatar on March 28th, the date that opens the championship calendar.

Aside from the paint, the 9X8 that will hit the track in Qatar is the same car that finished the 2025 season in Bahrain. Peugeot has already used its five Evo Jokers permitted by the regulations and its second homologation, which prevents it from introducing a new aerodynamic package without authorization from the FIA.

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Cassidy and Pourchaire renew the lineups

The most relevant aspect for the season is who is driving. The #93 car will feature Paul di Resta and Stoffel Vandoorne alongside Nick Cassidy, who arrives in the Hypercar category with extensive experience in prototypes and single-seaters. In the #94, Loïc Duval and Malthe Jakobsen will share the wheel with Théo Pourchaire, who already tested the 9X8 in Bahrain at the end of last season and briefly got ahead in the race during his first appearance in the WEC.

The team operates under new management with Emmanuel Esnault as director, who recently took the position and will oversee his first full season at the helm of the project.

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Peugeot comes off its best WEC season finish

The image change comes at a time when Peugeot has real sporting reasons to be optimistic. The end of 2025 was the team's best period since entering the Hypercar category: the #93 finished second at the 6 Hours of Fuji, less than eight seconds behind the winner in the championship's 100th race, and the #94 reached the podium at the Lone Star Le Mans at COTA with a third-place finish. In São Paulo, both cars finished in the top ten with sixth and seventh place respectively.

That second half of the year contrasted with a complicated start. Le Mans was discreet, with the #94 in 12th position and the #93 in 17th, and Bahrain closed the calendar with ninth and tenth. In the championship standings, Peugeot finished seventh among the constructors with 84 points, only ahead of Aston Martin (24), and far behind Ferrari (245), Toyota (171), and Porsche (165).

The problem is that Peugeot arrives in 2026 without updates to the car while most other teams have evolved. Toyota presented the TR010 Hybrid with redesigned aerodynamics, BMW worked with Dallara to change approximately half of the bodywork on the M Hybrid V8, Cadillac modified the V-Series.R, and Genesis enters the category with a completely new Hypercar. Ferrari also did not update the 499P, but the situation is different: they arrive as constructors' champions and with three consecutive victories at Le Mans. Peugeot, the second-worst constructor in 2025, goes on track with the same package as last year and without those results to support that path.

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New Hypercar for 2027?

The other pending issue in Versailles is the future of the 9X8, as the project leadership has acknowledged that it is evaluating all options, including a completely new car if the WEC rules allow it and it makes sporting sense. For now, the inclination seems to be to evolve the existing 9X8 rather than committing to a project from scratch, but that depends heavily on the clarity the FIA provides regarding the regulations that will govern the Hypercar category from 2027.

If those regulations are favorable, Peugeot could opt for a new model towards 2027 or 2028. In the short term, there is a clause in the 2026 regulations that could allow extra Jokers for underperforming manufacturers, which would open the door to a major aerodynamic revision of the 9X8 for 2027 without needing to develop a completely new car. For now, the commitment to the category remains firm and Peugeot will try to get closer to the podiums consistently from Qatar onwards with the same package that yielded good results in the second half of 2025.