SEBRING, Fla. — Peugeot came to the annual American Le Mans Series winter test at Sebring Int’l Raceway, and if it didn’t exactly conquer, it did serve notice that its turbocharged 908 coupe will be in the hunt for the overall victory in the annual 12-Hour Mobil-backed ALMS opener March 17.

For two out of the three days that the sessions ran, the Peugeot of Nic Minassian, Pedro Lamy and Stephane Sarrarin topped the speed charts over the Audi turbo diesel E10 of Allan McNish and Rinaldo Capello.

The two cars, which fought last June at Le Mans where the Audi came away with triumph, have never met on American soil, the French manufacturer choosing to stay in Europe during 2007, the debut season for 908. That strategy led to Peugeot’s claiming the European Le Mans Series crown as Audi concentrated its efforts here and at Le Mans itself.

Now, it appears that Peugeot will enter the Mobil 1 12 Hours with the test coupe, and will run it again at Road Atlanta’s Petit Le Mans next fall.

In terms of the times, however, the differential between the Audi and the Peugeot was just .136 of a second. More importantly, during the first day of testing on Monday, the Peugeot suffered engine problems that forced a change in powerplants, while the Audi, which has been near totally reliable during its two title chases in ’06 and ’07, ran like a train.

How the sometimes delicate French entry, which so far has run only on the ultra smooth tracks on the other side of the Atlantic, will fare on Sebring’s rough, car-killing surface, is a question that will have to wait.

Meanwhile in LMP2, the home of the Penske Team Porsche RS Spyders and their Acura ARX01b counterparts, the rules-mandated extra 25 kilograms of weight, appears to have indeed hurt the performance of the smaller prototypes to the tune of about a half a second a lap over the aging airport circuit.

Acura officials indicated they may well move up to LMP1 in the near future, a decision which has been speculated about ever since the Acura program was announced in 2006. Although insiders report there have been informal efforts to see if Porsche will similarly decide to run in LMP1, those efforts have resulted in little, if any official enthusiasm on the part of the Zuffenhausen-based German firm for making such a move.

With Porsche in the process of increasing its ownership position in Volkswagen, Audi’s parent company, to 51 percent, there appears no rational for the smaller sports-car oriented firm to want to derail the commercial benefits gained through the R10 on street car sales.

Perhaps even more important is that former Indy 500 champion, and Penske driver Gil de Ferran will become the fourth Acura team on the ALMS tour, starting at Long Beach where he will join Adrian Fernandez, Highcroft Racing and Andretti-Green in the push to dislodge the Porsche’s from their perch in LMP2.

As for the Porsches, the two Penske cars will again be joined by the two Dyson Racing RS Spyders which this year will see Marino Franchitti, Dario’s younger brother, stepping in to partner with Butch Leitzinger in one of the Rob Dyson’s two entries, the other being driven by Dyson’s son Chris, and Guy Smith.

As for the production car set, where Corvette has again committed to another full GT1 season, there is expected to be some “new” old opposition for the American two-seaters in the form of a quick Aston Martin DBR9 from Jim Bell Motorsport.

Meanwhile in GT2 the Ferrari camp led by the Risi 430GTs, got strong with the appearance of Tafel Racing’s similar coupe, Tafel having switched from Porsche’s 911GT3RSRs to Ferrari over the winter.