Alpine Uncertain on Habsburg’s Spa Status

Alpine remains uncertain if Ferdinand Habsburg will be able to rejoin its FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar squad for the third round at Spa-Francorchamps, despite the Austrian being listed on the entry list for the event.

Habsburg missed last weekend’s 6 Hours of Imola amid his ongoing recovery from a back injury sustained in a testing crash at Motorland Aragon in March.

At Imola, he was replaced by Alpine reserve driver Jules Gounon, who made his prototype racing debut and joined Paul-Loup Chatin and Charles Milesi en route to 15th place after the No. 35 Alpine A424 was caught up in a multi-car incident at the start.

Notably, Habsburg was named on the 37-car entry list for the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps that was released on Wednesday.

When approached for comment by Sportscar365, an Alpine spokesperson stated that Habsburg’s inclusion on the Spa entry list is “a placeholder that could be changed if he doesn’t fully recover in time.”

It was added that Alpine is currently not yet sure if Habsburg will be able to rejoin the team for the six-hour race on May 11.

Of note, it was also confirmed on Wednesday that he will not be taking part in the European Le Mans Series’ 4 Hours of Le Castellet, which takes place the weekend prior to WEC’s visit to Spa-Francorchamps.

Like for the Barcelona opener, Habsburg will be replaced aboard the No. 47 Cool Racing Oreca 07 Gibson by Chatin, who partners up with Alex Garcia and Frederik Vesti.

Alpine team principal Philippe Sinault told gathered media ahead of last weekend’s 6 Hours of Imola that he expected “good news” from Habsburg, giving some insight into his recovery process.

“I asked him to take time, to come back as soon as possible,” Sinault said.

“The environment of Ferdinand is very, very good. The personal one, the medical one also. So we expect some good news from him next week and we hope he could be with us as soon as possible now.

When asked if the Austrian would be able to race in Belgium, Sinault replied: “We don’t know exactly. We will have a more clear view at the end of next week.”

It is currently not yet known if Alpine will again call on the services of reserve driver Gounon at Spa if needed, or if it will opt to race with a two-driver lineup like Hypercar rivals Peugeot, Cadillac and Hertz Team JOTA.

Gounon, a Mercedes-AMG factory driver, is currently scheduled to compete in the second round of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS at Buriram with Climax Racing on the same weekend.

The Andorran driver missed Fanatec GT Asia’s season opener at Sepang in order to race at Imola and was replaced in Malaysia by Ralf Aron.