Lapierre Feels Imola “Underlined” Alpine Weaknesses

Nicolas Lapierre believes a difficult 6 Hours of Imola underscored the weaknesses of Alpine’s FIA World Endurance Championship contender.

The French manufacturer endured a weekend to forget in the second round of the season as its two A424s finished 13th and 16th, two and four laps down respectively.

While both Alpines were caught up a first-corner melee on the opening lap, with the No. 36 car Lapierre shares with Mick Schumacher and Matthieu Vaxiviere faring worse, both of the Signatech-run cars struggled in qualifying, ending up only ahead of the solo Isotta Fraschini on the grid in 17th and 18th places.

Speaking ahead of the race, Lapierre admitted that the A424 was not performing well over the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari’s curbs and bumps, which provided a very different challenge to the season opener in Qatar.

“We underlined one of our weaknesses,” said Lapierre. “It’s the first time we ran on a track with so many bumps and curbs.

“It was not part of our testing program because it’s so specific and we prefer to test on tracks that we will find more in the season. This is why the car does not feel amazing compared to the others.

“We kept improving during the week but there are only three free practice [sessions], and the time is flying during the race weekend.”

As well as the track layout itself, Lapierre admitted that tire warm-up was another area where Alpine lost out at Imola amid relatively cool track temperatures.

“[It took] a bit longer than the others [to warm the tires], that was one of our problems,” said the French driver.

“It seems some cars like the Porsche and Ferrari are very fast to get in the rhythm, and we are not at the moment. This is also something we need to work on.”

Alpine’s difficult weekend at Imola followed an encouraging debut for the A424 in the Qatar 1812km, as the No. 35 machine of Ferdinand Habsburg, Paul-Loup Chatin and Charles Milesi came away with a seventh-place finish.

While admitting that the Qatar result was “maybe better than expected”, team principal Philippe Sinault played down the importance of Alpine’s struggles for pace at Imola.

“We are at the start of the project, so each day we have something to learn,” said Sinault. “But the base, the foundations are good now.

“At Imola we learned each lap also in a new environment. Our target is to learn as much as possible and be ready as soon as possible. We are not really focused about the lap time at Imola. We try to get a global overview for all the project.

“At the end, Imola is not the key point for us. We have to get a view of our technical key points of understanding, like how to warm the tires, energy management and so on.”

Lapierre also mentioned top speed as an area where Alpine was lacking at Imola, with the two A424s recording a maximum of 316.7 km/h (196.8 mph) prior to the race, versus 321.4 km/h (199.7 mph) for the Ferrari 499P.

However, the 40-year-old is sure that the next two rounds of the WEC will be better suited to the French marque.

“This track is very specific,” he said. “For sure when we go to Spa and Le Mans it will be a different story.”

Davey Euwema contributed to this report