Mick Schumacher has made it clear that Alpine Endurance Team “deserved this podium after fighting so hard,” following their first podium finish in the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). The French team survived a challenging and at times chaotic 6 Hours of Fuji to bring home a fantastic 3rd place finish for the #36 car, with the #35 relegated to 7th following a late penalty.
Charles Milesi ensured that the #35 Alpine A424 was a force to be reckoned with by putting in a great display in qualifying. The Frenchman qualified 6th fastest, just 0.002 seconds behind the championship leading and eventual race winning #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport. Following a clean first lap, the #35 car was an unfortunate victim in a first corner incident on lap 2, caused by #83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P locking up, creating a concertina-style crash that impacted multiple cars.
Both #35 and #36 cars immediately set about climbing back up the order, with the French team looking more competitive than ever in 2024. Milesi in #35 was particularly impressive, storming up the order to 3rd and setting the fastest lap of the race in the process, a 1:30.943. Unfortunately for the #35 crew, they were slapped with a drive-through penalty with just 25 minutes to go, dropping them from 3rd down to 10th. It is truly impressive that Milesi finished in 7th, pushing hard to fight back three places, finishing just 0.008 seconds ahead of the #94 Peugeot TotalEnergies team in a battle to the line.
Meanwhile, Schumacher kept fighting at the helm of the #36 car. Having benefited from the sister car’s misfortune, he made a great move to pass the #12 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche 963 with just 6 minutes of the 6 hour race left to run. Not only that, but in the remaining few minutes he managed to extend a gap of over 3 seconds to his nearest rival behind him. Alpine shared a podium with the #15 BMW M Team WRT crew who also celebrated their first podium of the year, a fantastic demonstration of how competitive and exhilarating WEC is.
“It’s a positive result for the team and everyone involved in the project” enthused the German driver. “We deserved this podium after fighting so hard when success wasn’t on our side until now. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case today, but we still have to work on our pace. We’re heading in the right direction, and we want more. We’re all here to win, so let’s keep giving it everything we’ve got.”
Fellow #36 driver Matthieu Vaxiviere was equally pleased while focused on the future. “I’m pleased with our result today, and all credit to the team after more than a year of development and hard work behind the scenes” the Frenchman said. “We keep improving at every race, and getting our first podium in our debut FIA WEC season with the Alpine A424 is quite an achievement. It will only strengthen our motivation to aim even higher in the future.”
“We’re improving from one race to the next” confirmed the 3rd #36 driver Nicholas Lapierre. “We’re gradually getting closer to the best teams’ pace, and we’ve enjoyed terrific reliability over the last three races. The team did a good job with sound strategic decisions and good stops at the right moments. Even though we still have much work to do for the future, there are many positive points.”
Despite having a podium snatched away at the last minute, Charles Milesi remained positive. “It was a good race overall” he explained. “We had a good car from the start of the weekend, which allowed us to fight for the podium and maybe even more at one point. It gives us even more confidence in our potential. There’s one race left this season, so we need to keep working to find further improvements for the future.“
Ferdinand Habsburg, driver of the #35 car, had some great words to say regarding what he viewed as the biggest success of the weekend. “I’m especially pleased with how the whole team behaved” Habsburg enthused. “From the car to the engineers and mechanics, everything went well, whereas the collision caused by the Ferraris could have put us on the back foot. We had to push hard to come back, and we did it, thanks in particular to the pace set by Charles. Unfortunately, traffic is always tricky when several categories share the track, but we made all the right decisions.“
The final round of the utterly gripping 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship is the 8 Hours of Bahrain which takes place on Saturday 2 November. In such a competitive field, it will be intriguing to see whether les Bleues can continue their great form.
