Alpine Endurance Team has shown the colors and drivers, prior to the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship start later this month.
The brand new Alpine A424 is built to the LMDh regulations, and will compete in the Hypercar category in the FIA WEC. If the team would wish to do so, they could also enter IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, where the technical base fits into the GTP category. But before doing so, it would have to go through a technical process and tests, just like everybody else wishing to compete in the American sportscar series have to do.
Photo: Alpine
The driver line-ups for the two cars have also been revealed.
Car #35 will be driven by Charles Milesi, Paul-Loup Chatin and Ferdinand Habsburg, while Matthieu Vaxiviere, Nicolas Lapierre and Mick Schumacher will share car #36.
It has also been announced that Jules Gounon is the new reserve driver for the team, and he will be an active part of the test and development of the car. Gounon has a GT background, where he most recently has been racing for Mercedes. Prior to that, he was a Bentley boy, but got his sportscar breakthrough in the ADAC GT Masters with a Callaway Corvette.
Photo: Alpine
While the chassis has been developed by ORECA, the engine is a Mecachrome, with the basis of the Formula 2 engine, but has been developed to handle the Hybrid system, that all LMDh cars run. A V6 engine with up to 675 bhp output, when the electric part of the drivetrain isn’t active.
The team will be run by the same base, that has run LMP1 and LMP2 cars lately for the Alpine brand, which is a sub-brand to Renault. Philippe Sinault, founder of Signatech, will be the team boss for the team, while Bruno Famin, whom people might remember from his Peugeot time from 2007-2012, is the VP of Alpine Motorsports, which includes the Formula 1 team, running the same basic design.
The FIA WEC 2024 season starts in two weeks’ time, with the Prologue in Qatar, with the first race weekend being run on the very same location on 2 March.
