Peugeot's qualifying weekend at the Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps began with a heart-in-mouth moment for the new exposed-wing 9X8, as Danish driver Malthe Jakobsen spun the #94 hypercar at the top of Eau Rouge with his outlap tyres still freezing cold.
The FIA World Endurance Championship broadcast captured the precise moment the car snapped sideways across the kerbing at Raidillon, with the team radio relaying the immediate driver feedback in three blunt words. "My tyres are dead," Jakobsen reported as the car came to rest on the run uphill toward Les Combes.
It is a corner with a long history of writing off cars on cold tyres, and Jakobsen was lucky to escape with only flat-spotted tyres rather than significant damage. "It is a very tricky outlap, this circuit, on cold tyres, and Jakobsen, I fear, will be carrying a few flat spots there," the FIA WEC commentary team noted in the immediate aftermath.
The lead analyst on the broadcast indicated the moment exposed a fundamental challenge of the new exposed-wing aerodynamic package. With less bodywork covering the rear of the car, downforce becomes hugely sensitive to airspeed, and on a cold outlap that downforce simply is not there. "We saw very much less of that effect in LMGT3 because the car is more mechanical-grip-based," he explained. "These cars rely on the aero. If you cannot push fast enough on the tyre, you do not get that downforce."
The analyst's reconstruction of the incident pinpointed the exact mechanism. The right-hand side of the tyre was at ambient temperature, and as soon as Jakobsen turned left and applied power on the climb out of Eau Rouge, traction simply was not there. "The right-hand side of the tyres are freezing cold, well, ambient temperature at least," the broadcast explained. "As soon as he has turned left on power, the thing spun around, or half spin at least."
The near-miss drew immediate comparisons to a famous incident at the same corner involving Toyota's Brendan Hartley a few years ago, when the New Zealander lost control on a similar outlap at Raidillon and ended up making heavy contact with the barrier. Jakobsen, the broadcast noted, "is lucky they did not end up in the barrier there."
A second analogous moment was raised for context. "It is like Nick Cassidy leaving the pits in Imola on cold tyres," the lead analyst added. "Touch the kerb off because it just bounces the car into the air enough to break that what little traction you have got, and off you go."
The Peugeot 9X8 has been transformed for the 2026 season, with the marque's bold no-rear-wing concept finally abandoned in favour of a conventional rear wing package after years of struggling on aerodynamic balance. Friday's qualifying outlap drama is a reminder that the new package brings new sensitivities, and that cold-tyre driving on the toughest circuit on the calendar will always be the trickiest moment of any session.
For Jakobsen, the bigger concern is whether the flat spots picked up in that half-spin will affect his subsequent lap times. With the 6 Hours of Spa unfolding through Saturday afternoon, every tenth gained or lost in qualifying matters, and a flat-spotted set of softs is not the way Peugeot wanted to begin its second hypercar weekend of 2026 against a Toyota and Ferrari fight that has dominated the headlines so far this year.
The French marque had topped the recent Imola weekend's pace conversation by quietly being there or thereabouts on race pace. Spa is the next data point, and after Friday's qualifying scare, Jakobsen and team-mate Loïc Duval have a busy night ahead reviewing telemetry to make sure the next outlap is the right one.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports News](https://motorsports.global/article/peugeot-9x8-jakobsen-spa-2026-cold-tyre-spin-raidillon-radillon). Visit for full coverage.*
