The French have a long history in Formula 1, whether it be drivers such as Alan Prost, Jean Alesi, Olivier Panis or to current crop of Frenchmen in the sport your Pierre Gasly’s or Esteban Ocon.
The French team Alpine formerly Renault who have a long history in the sport, as well as former French teams such as Prost, Ligier and Matra.
But one company that is seemingly forgotten about in French F1 history, before all the major manufacturers got into the sport such as BMW, Toyota and Honda retuning for the millionth time, there was Peugeot a company with a history of winning in rallying and endurance racing.
Peugeot in Formula 1 is much less successful than rally counterpart, starting in 1994 with McLaren using a 3.5L V10 engine that relationship with McLaren only lasted until the end of that year, the apparent reason for the split was the lack of Peugeot factory support which they would get later with Ilmor built Mercedes-Benz engines.
Eddie Jordan took up the Peugeot engines next for his team in the 95, 96 and 97 season achieving five podiums, with drivers Eddie Irvine and Rubens Barrichello finishing 2nd & 3rd in the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix.
Strangely enough it was politics that landed Peugeot their next engine deal, with Renault withdrawing from the sport it meant that Peugeot were the only French engine manufacturer in the sport, unless you count the older Renault engine being badged as Playlife or Supertech.
From 1998 Peugeot were but under pressure from the French government to provide engines for the only French team, that being Alan Prost’s Prost Grand Prix, however the nature of the agreement between Prost and Peugeot changed before the start of the 98 season with Peugeot now charging Prost for three seasons worth of engines, where the original agreement would have seen Prost get five seasons worth of engines for free with Peugeot factory support.
Prost were plagued by reliability issues with its Peugeot engines they scored just one point in the 1998 season, nine points were the total in 1999 through Jarno Truli finishing second at the 1999 European Grand Prix. However, the year 200 was a disaster for Peugeot, they finished with zero points and with no wins since their debut in 1994 the French manufacturer was done with Formula 1.
However, the Peugeot engine did live on for a couple more years, with the engines being bought by a consortium in Asia and badged as Asiatech which powered the Arrows team in 2001 and Minardi in 2002.
So why did Peugeot fail in F1? Well Formula 1 is a ruthless sport and if you don’t spend and evolve you won’t succeed likewise if you don’t adapt your approach to the sport you won’t succeed either, just because you were all conquering in another form of motorsport doesn’t give you any right to walk into Formula 1 and dominate, just look at how much money Toyota spent in their time in the sport.
Could Peugeot return to Formula 1, you would say never say never but it’s highly unlikely, in the year 2000 an executive from the company claimed ‘Never Again’ in an article from Autosport magazine.
But the real issue here is that Peugeot has different goals, they are in endurance racing now and WEC (World Endurance Championship) is at the top of its game right now. They would also be weary of major manufacturers like Toyota and BMW having very little success in the sport in the noughties.
Plus you throw in the recent merger with Fiat Chrysler into Stallantis and you’d think, well Stallantis have a stake hold in Ferrari through the Agnelli family, why would they want another brand challenging Ferrari, also Peugeot would e wise to look at the mess that is Alpine, their F1 team is awful with Renault not providing enough resources to power that team anywhere near the podium, and the less said about Alpine’s stint at the 2024 Le Mans 24 Hour the better.
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