Peugeot upbeat about reliability

The team beat Audi in Sunday's Barcelona 1000km race, the opening round of the 2008 Le Mans Series, with a faultless run for Nicolas Minassian and Marc Gene.

And while the pole-sitting car of Stephane Sarrazin and Pedro Lamy hit problems twice in the race, both times they were accident-related.

The 908 HD1 FAP also proved more than equal to Audi's factory challenge, now that the German manufacturer has targeted a European assault in 2008. The French car outpaced Audi's R10 in every session in Spain this weekend.

The team's competition boss, Michel Barge, said that he believed that Peugeot were now on the right track, after a season learning about their diesel-powered LMP1 prototype, where the car had been fast but fragile: "This is a superb win. We were joined here by Audi and that gave us a chance to see that the 908 HDi FAP is competitive.

"I believe we are on the right track to be able to put in strong sprints each time out with a good level of reliability."

The car also took pole in the American Le Mans Series opener at Sebring last month, but on that occasion reliability problems denied it the opportunity to show its race capabilities over 12 hours against the Audis and Porsches.

A hydraulic leak on the gearshift mechanism and a wheel bearing failure during the race rendered it in the midfield.

Peugeot's technical director added that he had been extremely happy with the 908's reliability at Barcelona.

"It was a very good weekend technically because we didn't have a single problem," said Famin. "All the drama resulted from race incidents! We were running with the same specification as Sebring, and the N°7 car was equipped with a certain number of elements - including the engine - that had done all the running in the American race.

"We now total a distance of 5,500km, while the Le Mans 24 Hours will probably last something like 6,000km"

The incidents that delayed the Sarrazin/Lamy car enough to drop it to 12th at the finish both came while the car was running in traffic, but the French driver said the first of them came when he was taken by surprise while closely following race leader Allan McNish in the Audi.

"I didn't really understand McNish's move," said Sarrazin. "For a moment, I thought he had a problem because he braked hard in an unusual place. I hit my brakes, too, but Enge wasn't able to avoid me with his Aston Martin."