The confirmation in recent weeks of the six drivers that will complete the Alpine Hypercar line-up has seen a flurry of media opportunities, one of which was a helpful catch-up with Vice President of Alpine Motorsport Bruno Famin and Alpine Endurance team principal Philippe Sinault for a number of motorsport media including the DSC Editor.
Can you take us through your process of driver selection for the six names we’ve seen confirmed to drive for Alpine next season?
Bruno Famin
“I think Philippe and I have a quite strong network in terms of potential drivers. Part of them are very well known by Philippe on the Alpine Endurance team already.
“Of course Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieo Vaxiviere are two pillars of the team and Charles more recently, Paul Loup maybe a bit before, also has been part of the team.
“After analysing a bit the data, but knowing their mindset and of course the speed and their reliability is interesting, but the mindset is at least as important as the pure speed.
“Talking in the F1 paddock with Mick Schumacher, when you identify an opportunity to have him in the team, for sure you try to work on that and Mick finally agreed to join the Alpine Endurance team.
“There is not a huge industrial process. It’s a very human and manual process. This is how we work.
Philippe Sinault
“It’s an Alpine ‘DNA’ selection, we based and focused on the data and performance. But the mindset is a key point. So we met, especially the newcomers for a long time to talk with them about the project. That too was part of the selection.”
Bruno Famin
“We tested some other drivers – for example, Jack Doohan in an LMP2 in Portimao.
“But from my experience, we don’t want to make a real proper conclusion about a test. It’s quite easy to be fast once.
“The real thing we need from an endurance driver is not only to be fast, but to make no mistakes, to preserve tyres and to preserve everything for the crew and for the team.
“That’s really why pure pure performance is a very interesting point but it’s not the only point.
“The conclusion we can take from testing is very limited. And that’s why we didn’t organise more tests.
“We could have organised a test with 3, 4, 5 – 10 guys, but you know, you have some guys who know the track, the tyres, I think we prefer working with people we know, in one way or another, and we are confident that they are going to do the job.
“I think an endurance team is a team and on a team, you need to bring everybody together from the mechanics to the drivers to the team Principal and you need to really work very closely as one.
“I think human skills are at least as important that pure speed for evaluating the speed. We have a lot of data on all our drivers racing in the ELMS in IMSA, and in WEC, we know we know their speed. We don’t need to have to organise a test to know how fast they are.
A question for both of you about about Paul Loup (Chatin). Philippe, you know him really well because he had three years with your team. Bruno, I don’t know if you already had the opportunity to work with him but we were surprised that he didn’t have an opportunity like this before.
Can you just tell us a little bit about this choice specifically?
Philippe Sinault:
“Paul Loup was on the list for a long time as you can imagine, because he proved to everybody the level of performance that he has. He was so courageous to go to IMSA to prove again his level of performance.
“I have been close to him for many years and I made a promise to him that if he showed that he has got the right level to join us for the future he would have a place. Everybody noticed his level at Le Mans and in IMSA where he had a perfect season this year again so it was natural to contact him and to see if it was possible to work together again. his mindset is perfect, the level that it takes is there and it was so easy for him to just join us. He’s already ready to share this ambitious project.”
Mick Schumacher is the only driver who doesn’t have endurance experience, but also he’s the only one who raced in Formula One Are there any specific things that the team can learn from his Formula One experience and how steep will the learning curve be for him to adapt to endurance racing?
Bruno Famin
“What he can bring to the team is his experience of the very very high level of competition of course.
“Endurance is becoming now a very high-level discipline because we have so many manufacturers with very high-level line-ups and engineers I think it’s really becoming with the BoP to come with very good drivers. It is not only about fast drivers, it is about drivers who will manage the tyres for one, two three stints and will take care of the car for his teammate, who be happy to make some compromise to ensure the best performance across all the three drivers.
“But having Mick bringing his experience to a very high level. He is still a Mercedes reserve driver and he has a very long and a good experience of what is a top-level Formula One team. He has two full seasons with Haas and he will bring us some ideas and methodologies to help put the bar higher for sure – which is what we want. I think he’s a very, very clever guy, a very well educated guy. And I have absolutely no doubt about his capacity to share the car with his teammates.”
You said that having Mick Schumacher in the car was a no brainer?
Bruno Famin
“Because I’m convinced that in Formula One he is underestimated. Because I think he’s a very good driver, a very fast driver. Don’t forget he has been the Formula Two Champion and Formula Three champion He has a lot of very good skills and having the opportunity to have such a fast and good driver. I don’t see why we would have missed it.”
A couple of weeks ago when Mick first drove the car, the line there was that it was a one-off thing and it was no plans to do anything else.
So I was just curious. When did that change? When did it move from one time to having him in the car for the full season?
“It was not really a one-off, the test was made for him to know about this type of car because he has made his career so far, in open wheelers.
“Of course, we discussed the possibility of doing something but he was very curious to drive the car to feel how and to know how an endurance team is working.
“That’s why he came to Jerez. Then it was for him to discover the endurance world as he knows only the single-seater world, to have his own mind on whether he would be happy to have a drive or not.”
Mercedes has confirmed that Mick will stay as a reserve driver in Formula One next season. If he is called up to drive in F1 what would happen with Alpine?
“The contract is clear, the agreement with Mick is clear, if he has the opportunity to drive in Formula One to replace George or Lewis, he will go to Formula One.”
Who would be, therefore, your seventh driver if Mick was unavailable?
“A reserve driver will be known in due time. We will have one. From among the Alpine Endurance family if we have a problem, we will find easily a reserve driver.”
What testing are you set to do before the start of the season for the team? Is there any prospect of Mick getting any race driving in a sports car race before then,
“Our next test will be in Portimao in the middle of December. After that, we have two or three destinations before the start of the season.”
During your endurance test did you expect to have the problems you had, for example, the problem you had with the turbo at the test?
“When you do your first endurance test with a new car, you expect to have a lot of problems generally.
“We had some!
“Generally, if you expect to have a problem, you try to do your best before to solve it and to plan to avoid it.
“This kind of session is done to identify all the other problems. And yes, we had we had three or four problems. We are working on it on it’s part of the project development. There is nothing major, nothing structural nothing, which requires us to redesign things as far as we know, for the time being and having done 5000 kilometres is quite a good result for a first endurance test for a new car.”
Did Alpine have any discussion with current Hypercar class drivers for his 2024 line-up?
Philippe Sinault
“Yes, we had several, discussions with current Hypercar drivers. But I am proud today, we made no compromise about our driver selection.”
Bruno Famin
“What I can add personally, is that I received dozens of calls from current Hypercar class drivers to drive for Alpine.
“I was quite pleased with that, to be honest, because that means that people trust our project.”
How do you see your prospects and your chances in your first year in this class? What is realistic, and what’s your minimum, in terms of one round or in the whole season?
“The target of the project is very clear. It is to win, to be able to fight for wins in the championship races, in the 24 hours of Le Mans and, if we fight for race wins, we will fight for the championship.
“This is really the target of the project – it’s high, it’s very ambitious, because we know that the grid is super strong, we have very well experienced teams or manufacturers in front. We are very respectful.
“But there is no reason not to set that kind of target for 2024. We will take it in a very humble way.
“For many reasons. The first one is that the project is you know, we just finished our fourth test session and the first race is in less than 100 days. That means we have a lot to do to make the car reliable, to learn as a team to operate the car, to manage the performance, to manage the tyres, to manage the energy. The driver line-up has to learn how to work together.
“We have a lot to do. That means that 2024 will be really a learning year.
“That’s why I return to the question of whether Mick will have a race before.
“No, he won’t, because we will all have to learn a lot and the first target in Doha, Qatar for the first race will be to try to finish the race.
“It’s a long one, more than 10 hours. It’s a very long one to start with. The first target could be to work well as a team and try to finish the race and keep learning and improve everything over the year to be really competitive in 2025.
“That’s really the target, we don’t have sporting goals for the 2024 season what we have is a very high learning goal to build the team and to develop the car altogether.”
Is it really viable for Alpine to compete at two top levels at the same time – do they have enough resources and I don’t only mean money, but human resources too, to keep this up for for a prolonged period?
“There is no direct communication between Formula One and the endurance programmes. Of course, if we have a specific point or problem to solve, we will share information of course if needed but it’s two different groups of people.
“The size of the groups are completely different. Don’t forget that for the endurance programme we chose to go with LMDh regulation.
“LMDH is much less costly in terms of resources because part of the car is already designed by regulation – the spine or the chassis, some suspension and so on are already designed by the chassis manufacturer, which is mandatory.
“We are working with Oreca. Of course, on all the power unit side and electronics and software, we are developing everything in relation to that. We have dedicated staff for that. On that side, we can add some support from the Formula One team if needed.
“But at the end of the story, the size of the endurance programme is not comparable at all with the size of the Formula One programme, it’s almost one to 10 the ratio in terms of resources.
“There is no problem in having the two projects together. Thanks to the LMDH regulations and for the time being it works quite well.”
