Lapierre: Best Newcomer “Achievable” for Alpine in Qatar

Nico Lapierre believes Alpine can target being the best of the new Hypercar manufacturers in this weekend’s FIA World Endurance Championship season opener.

The French driver made the remarks ahead of qualifying for the Qatar 1812km, having placed 12th in Friday morning’s third practice session in the No. 36 Alpine A424 he shares with ex-Formula 1 racer Mick Schumacher and Matthieu Vaxiviere.

Alpine’s No. 35 car was 13th quickest ahead of the two BMW M Hybrid V8s and the one-car entries from Lamborghini Iron Lynx and Isotta Fraschini.

Based on that form, Lapierre believes that Alpine can realistically set itself the goal of beating its fellow newcomers as the season gets underway at Lusail International Circuit.

“It’s clearly one of our targets, and an achievable one, even if BMW is not really new because they already raced in IMSA,” said Lapierre when asked by Sportscar365 about the prospect of beating BMW, Lamborghini and Isotta Fraschini in Qatar.

“It’s something we could achieve, and we would be happy to achieve it. We saw during free practice we were on this pace, but once again we just try to focus on ourselves.

“There are a lot of parameters to play with, which are quite new for the team as well. It’s a question of working all together on these parameters.

“Of course the further forward we finish, the happier we will be, because in the end we have big ambitions for this project and we want to move forward as fast as possible. Clearly this race will be a learning process.”

Philippe Sinault, the boss of the Signatech operation that runs the Alpines, highlighted the importance of getting both cars to the finish in Qatar.

“The target is to definitely to finish the race with two cars,” said Sinault. “If we achieve this, we will learn a lot for the future. That is the key point: finish the race and learn.”

Alpine’s two cars have run reliably throughout practice so far, but the No. 35 machine shared by Paul-Loup Chatin, Charles Milesi and Ferdinand Habsburg suffered an engine problem during the Prologue test which required the Mecachrome unit to be changed.

Hypercar rookie Habsburg however says he has been pleased by the A424’s general reliability so far, even if he admits that facing genuine on-track competition for the first time has altered the team’s perspective slightly compared with private testing.

“We came here with simple goals, to do a perfect weekend, and even though it sounds simple, it’s more difficult than you think because the spirit of competition kicks in as soon as you arrive [at the circuit] and suddenly you are thinking about other things besides yourself!” said Habsburg.

“Having said that, we are learning new things about the car that we didn’t expect to come across. But finally we haven’t had that many issues, which is awesome, and there’s a lot of optimism in the team that we can finish the race with both cars.

“I think we can proud of the two years that Alpine has done to build this car and put us in a nice position where we think, maybe not today or tomorrow, but in the coming months, as we discover where we are in the championship, that we will be where Philippe set out to be when we started the program.”

Asked whether points on debut could be a goal in Qatar, Habsburg replied: “I wouldn’t put my house on it for now, but I think it’s possible. But it would be wicked: I would scream on the radio celebrating a lot if that happens!”