Robert Shwartzman has won a Hypercar race. Peugeot's 9X8 never has
Shwartzman has gone a full season without a single race start
Robert Shwartzman is 26, he put a car on pole for the Indianapolis 500 as a rookie in 2025, and he has not raced anything at all in 2026. Prema withdrew from IndyCar at the start of the year and took his seat with it. Peugeot has now signed him for the World Endurance Championship from 2027, which ends the strangest year of his career.
Shwartzman joins Team Peugeot TotalEnergies for the 2027 season
Peugeot confirmed the signing at Austin, where the World Endurance Championship raced last weekend. Shwartzman will drive one of the revised 9X8 Le Mans Hypercars from 2027, and team principal Emmanuel Esnault said the line-up is not finished, with decisions still to make on the rest of the crews. Shwartzman is not a stranger to the category. He held test and reserve duties at Ferrari's Formula 1 team from 2022 to 2024 and raced in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup at the same time.
The 9X8 has 29 starts, four podiums and no wins
This is the record Shwartzman is walking into. Since its debut at Monza in 2022, the 9X8 has started 29 World Endurance Championship races and won none of them, with four podiums, one pole and one fastest lap to show for four seasons. No team title, no drivers' title, no manufacturers' title. Peugeot went into a full technical reset for 2027, abandoning the original concept that made the first 9X8 famous for having no rear wing. The record is the reason the reset exists.
His only Hypercar win came at Austin in 2024 with AF Corse
Shwartzman has done something Peugeot has not managed in four years. He won the 2024 Austin round with Robert Kubica and Yifei Ye in AF Corse's satellite Ferrari 499P, the customer car rather than the factory entry. Peugeot announced his signing at that same circuit, days after Ferrari won there again and the 9X8 completed start number 29 without adding to its total. Hiring the man who beat you at a track is a reasonable place to begin.
His first run in a 9X8 comes at the Algarve this month
Shwartzman has never driven a Peugeot Le Mans Hypercar. He gets his first laps in the middle of September at the Algarve circuit in Portimao, at only the second test of the heavily revised 2027 car, which first ran at Paul Ricard at the end of July. That is an unusual way round. Most manufacturers try a driver before announcing him, and Peugeot has committed to a man whose feel for the car is still theoretical.
Doriane Pin is still waiting for her own 9X8 laps in December
Peugeot's other 2027 question has not moved as quickly. Doriane Pin, the 2025 F1 Academy champion signed as a development driver in March, is being assessed for a test and reserve role, and her first run in a 9X8 is now scheduled for Paul Ricard at the start of December, in a 2026-spec car rather than the 2027 one. Her original date, the official rookie test in Bahrain, disappeared when the season finale moved to Monza.
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Peugeot did not sign a fast driver here so much as a specific piece of evidence. Shwartzman has won a Hypercar race, in a customer Ferrari, against factory teams, at a circuit where the 9X8 has now failed 29 times to do the same thing. A programme that has never won usually recruits for experience or for a sponsor. This one has recruited a result it does not have.
The claim to test is simple. Peugeot has rebuilt the car, changed the technical direction and is now buying in drivers who know what winning in this class feels like. If the 2027 9X8 has not been on a podium by Le Mans, the problem was never the wing, the drivers or the concept, and four seasons of blaming the aerodynamics will have been an expensive way to avoid saying so. Shwartzman, at least, will know the difference immediately.
