Oreca to run customer Peugeot

[Red Firecracker]

What's the betting that unlike Henri, Hugues will (have to?) take out insurance against crashing the thing?

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/80610

Will Panis be placed in the Pug or kept in the Oreca chassis?

On a Peugeot related subject, they have denied Audi's request to run am interim spec R15 at Sebring, so no factory R15's as the 2010 car is not ready yet. Shame.

[Nick M]

Read that about the Audi this morning.

Disappointing, and perhaps a little un-sporting of Peugeot. I can appreciate there are rules and being competitive isn't just about what you do on track, but if they win with no opposition then it will be a bit of a hollow one. And even if they lost then they could just shrug their shoulders and say the Audi isn't legal anyway so it wasn't a fair race anyway.

Also, they're missing an opportunity to guage their performance against their biggest rival when there is sufficient time afterwards to try and do something about it. If Audi show up at Spa in May and blow Peugeot into the weeds then the chances of turning that deficit around are greatly diminished.

The fact that Audi were talking about running a 2010 engine in the 2009 R15 makes me think they're going all-out to get some, hopefully a lot, more power out of it so they can begin to match the straight line speeds of the Pugs. Either that or they've made an even more efficient version so they spend even less time in the pits.

[Red Firecracker]

I think it sums up Peugeot's general attitude to Sportscar racing. I'd like to think that if it was reversed Audi would welcome an interim Peugeot to get the competition. Maybe I'm wrong.

The updated Audi could be very interesting. I was sure they wouldn't do too much to it but it seems they are really going for a complete update which hopefully means a nice bit of competition again.