Lapierre: Alpine Sixth in Hypercar Pecking Order

Alpine sporting director Nicolas Lapierre has all but ruled the French marque out of the fight for this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, claiming that it lies sixth in the Hypercar pecking order for the FIA World Endurance Championship blue riband event.

Following back-to-back podium finishes in the two previous WEC races at Imola and Spa, Alpine went to Le Mans as one of the most-fancied brands to break the Ferrari/Toyota duopoly seen at the Circuit de la Sarthe in the last two years.

However, the Signatech-run team only managed to get one of its two A424s into Thursday night’s Hyperpole 2 shootout, when Frederic Makowiecki could do no better than ninth in the No. 36 car he shares with Mick Schumacher and Jules Gounon.

The sister No. 35 car of Charles Milesi, Ferdinand Habsburg and Paul-Loup Chatin will take the start of Saturday’s race from 12th on the grid.

“It has not been easy week to be honest,” Lapierre told Sportscar365. “We have not been as competitive as we expected.

“I think we have reduced the gap to the cars in front in qualifying and FP4, we found a slightly better base, but it’s not looking amazing in terms of race pace.

“We’ll have to see because the temperatures expected in the race are lower than what we have had up until now. It could change. There is no major drama; we are just lacking a bit overall pace.

“It is difficult to get a clear picture of where we stand in terms of performance. But it seems we are not as competitive as we were at Imola or at Spa.”

Lapierre stressed that Alpine has no firm objectives in terms of results for its second attempt at Le Mans after its ill-fated 2024 debut, in which both of its cars dropped out at the quarter-distance mark with identical turbo valve failures.

“Our goal is to have a clean race in terms of operations; there is no clear target in terms of the position,” he said. “What we want is to get to the end of the race, make no mistakes and have no regrets in terms of tire choice and everything. This is our focus.

“We have absolutely no expectations on finishing position. We’ll see where we end up.”

Asked if he sees Alpine as being the least competitive of the Hypercar field excluding Peugeot and newcomers Aston Martin, Lapierre replied: “Completely.

“At the start of the week we were even further towards Peugeot and Aston Martin, which was not great. Since then we came a bit back to the pack.

“If it’s hot temperatures, we would be really at the back of the pack. If it gets cooler, we could get a bit stronger.”

Alpine’s vice-president of motorsport Bruno Famin offered a similar assessment to Lapierre regarding Alpine’s chances in the race.

“I really don’t know,” Famin told Sportscar365. “It could be a top-five, we could be out of the top ten. You can do a good race with good strategy and no problems and you can be 11th or 12th.

“This is not our target, but even finishing in the top ten would already be very good.”

Alpine comes to Le Mans having completed a 24-hour endurance test earlier in the year at Motorland Aragon, which Lapierre reported went by without problems.

Asked if he felt fully confident about the A424’s reliability a year on from its Le Mans debut, Famin highlighted the brand’s otherwise strong finishing record in the WEC.

“Le Mans was very specific,” he said. “It was the only race where we had a reliability problem. It remains the only DNF we had from the start of the program until today.

“We have done six-hour races, eight hours, 10 hours… I think we have learned. But at Le Mans you always learn something new every year.”