Famin: Alpine Has “Good Basis” With A424 After First Test

Alpine has a “good basis” for further development with the A424 following the conclusion of its first test at Circuit Paul Ricard according to the manufacturer’s Vice President of motorsports Bruno Famin.

The A424 became the latest LMDh car to turn its first laps this week, as the ORECA-chassied machine took to the Le Castellet circuit for its first significant track running, completing 1,000 kilometers across a multi-day test at the French circuit.

The test came after an initial low-speed run at the end of August and an additional shakedown at the Aeroport du Castellet on Monday.

Across the following three days Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Charles Milesi all took turns behind the wheel of the turbocharged 3.4-liter V6 machine, with Lapierre also driving during the airport rollout at the start of the week.

“It has gone quite [well], to be honest,” Famin told Sportscar365. “The very first test, of course, the priority is first to check everything on the safety side first, to make sure the capability and drivability of the car. This is what we have done.

“We are not talking about performance, of course, but we made quite a reasonable mileage and we are quite happy with that.

“Of course, there is a lot to do, but the drivers are quite happy with the car as it is. That means that we have a good basis to work on now.”

Famin added that the focus for Alpine in the current stage of development is to tackle any reliability issues.

The manufacturer stated that the car completed the test without “significant issues” although Famin indicated that it did come across small problems during the week.

“The main challenge is reliability, of course, because to arrive first, you are first to arrive, as we all know,” he said.

“We need to work on that. Then, in the small issues we have noticed, we need to manage all the temperatures, especially under the bonnet, with the new powertrain we have.

“We have a lot of setup to do, of course, but the priority for the whole team will be working on the reliability of the car.”

Famin explained that the initial rollout was carried out with the hybrid system active.

“The very first shakedown was made to see if the car was working, but in fact we had some delay on some bodywork parts,” he said.

“On the very first shakedown, we didn’t have all the bodywork parts, some parts were missing. That’s why it was a very low speed shakedown, just to check the basic functions.”

The relative lack of spares in this early stage of development remains a point of risk for Alpine, but Famin expressed confidence in the ability of the drivers involved to steer clear of unnecessary problems.

“It’s like every beginning of the program, of course, not many spare parts, no spare chassis yet,” he said.

“Then we have to be careful. But I think we trust the drivers, I think Nico, Matthieu, even Charles, they are experienced drivers. They know we need to make a lot of kilometers.

“We don’t care yet about the pure performance. We are not looking at who is going to do the best lap time and we are even almost not looking at the lap time yet.

“Then it’s important not to crash, not to have a major problem. Make sure we can manage our best program as planned.

“Because the time is very short until the first race in 2024. If we can avoid making any mistakes, we know we will have enough problems, no need to make a mistake.”

Famin said that Alpine is in the process of constructing a second chassis, but that the French manufacturer has to deal with a tight timeframe to get its car homologated in time for the FIA World Endurance Championship Prologue in Qatar on Feb. 24-25.

“Of course, we are a bit short of time, because we have the test program to perform,” he said.

“We have the homologation process as well to perform, which is quite costly in terms of time.

“We are building the second car, we have started building the second car now. We have very tight planning until Qatar in 2024, because it seems very soon.

“The 2024 season is starting very early, almost one month earlier than usual. It’s true that the timing is very tight.”

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report