Lapierre: Alpine Must Aspire to Fight Top Teams in 2025

Nicolas Lapierre says Alpine must aspire to be in a position to fight against the FIA World Endurance Championship’s benchmark manufacturers in the A424’s second year.

With five races down this season, Alpine finds itself fourth in the manufacturers’ standings, battling BMW, Peugeot and Cadillac for ‘best of the rest’ honors behind the established leading trio of Toyota, Ferrari and Porsche.

The best result so far for the A424 has been seventh in the season-opening Qatar 1812km for the No. 35 car of Paul-Loup Chatin, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi.

But Lapierre says that Alpine cannot be satisfied with similar performances next year, when the French marque will no longer have the excuse of being in its first year.

“The competition is really tight, but obviously next year we want to be fight to be in the front,” Lapierre told Sportscar365. “We will be more ready with the car and the team operation, and the target will be to fight for the top positions.

“We know Toyota, Ferrari, Porsche are extremely strong and have a lot of experience, but we hope to fight with them for sure.”

Both Alpine crews showed promise in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with the No. 35 car qualifying fifth and the sister No. 36 machine that Lapierre shares with Matthieu Vaxiviere and Mick Schumacher only just missing out on Hyperpole.

While both Alpines dropped out of the race due to engine failures, the two A424s proved reliable in the following race at Sao Paulo, where the No. 36 scored the final point in 10th.

Looking ahead to the rest of the season, Lapierre says that Alpine has no fixed goals other than getting through the remaining races at the Circuit of The Americas, Fuji Speedway and Bahrain without issues.

“The important thing for us is to finish races and get the experience for next year,” Lapierre said. “For me this is target number one.

“We know the car is there now, we have shown it during the last events. Of course we want to improve and get even better, but the main point is to finish races. At the moment I am just enjoying it and we try to gain as much experience as we can.

“Next year will be a different story with real targets, and it will be a step forward, I hope. This year is still a learning year. Even though the car is quite competitive, we should not forget that this is the first year.

“We are getting closer every race. There is still room for improvement. A lot of the tracks, it’s the first time we are visiting them with the car, but the team operation is getting better and we are getting closer to the top teams.”

Lapierre added he has been pleased with the consistency of the A424 across a variety of tracks in its first season, with only the second round at Imola – the only race besides Le Mans where neither car scored points – proving more difficult.

The Frenchman believes this bodes well for a stronger challenge in 2025, assuming that the A424’s planned engine fixes worked as hoped.

“The car has been pretty good everywhere so far,” said Lapierre. “We struggled more at Imola but this was more on our side because we had to manage the power, but everywhere else the car has been quite strong.

“I think next year the car can be strong everywhere. The big step we need is the reliability, and making sure we can drive without problems.

“It’s a very complicated car, we need to make improvement on the systems and everything, and it takes a bit of time to understand every trick. But we have made some good steps this year already.”