Milesi: Alpine ‘Couldn’t Have Hoped’ for Fourth in First Season

Alpine driver Charles Milesi has described the team’s fourth place in the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Hypercar manufacturers’ standings as “pretty nice” as the team finished the season ‘best of the rest’ behind Toyota, Porsche and Ferrari.

The French brand collected 70 points with its pair of A424 LMDh cars in its first season back in the Hypercar category, having battled a significantly increased number of class rivals compared to its first stint with the grandfathered A480 LMP1 car.

Alpine finished in the top ten with at least one of its cars at every single round except April’s 6 Hours of Imola and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with the double retirement at the latter marking the low point of the team’s campaign.

It ended the year with a strong run across the final three races in the U.S., Japan and Bahrain, peaking with third place in the 6 Hours of Fuji in September.

Fourth place for Paul-Loup Chatin, Ferdinand Habsburg and Jules Gounon in the eight-hour season finale at the Bahrain International Circuit ultimately allowed Alpine to beat BMW in the battle for fourth in the constructors’ title.

Charles Milesi, who finished ninth in Bahrain aboard the sister No. 36 car, was upbeat about the result but proclaimed that it should motivate the team to fight for greater results in 2025.

“For the team to finish P4 in the championship is pretty nice considering how we started the year,” Milesi told Sportscar365.

“I don’t think we could have hoped for P4 at the start of the season. A lot of our rivals already had a year of experience in 2023 and had much more mileage on their cars.

“We made some good improvements and Fuji was a big highlight in terms of qualifying, performance and everything. Now we’re looking forward to 2025, and hopefully we can fight for even better positions.

“We are still a bit far from the top three, so the main goal will be to catch the guys in front. We’ll push hard to get closer to them and fight for regular podiums.”

Nicolas Lapierre, who was on site with Alpine prior to his appointment as team sporting director on Jan. 1, said he was “pleased” about the French brand’s final position in the championship.

“It’s good to finish fourth,” he said. “It was the target when we came here and it was basically also the target at the beginning of the year.

“I feel like we achieved what we wanted to achieve this year, clearly. The first year of the program is a success, even more now with the fourth position in the championship.

“Now we have our eyes full focus on next season. It’s nice to finish like this. It will help for the winter, for sure.”

Lapierre stated that Alpine had achieved its target of beating BMW to ‘best of the newcomers’ in the constructors’ championship.

“Even though they are still running since one year in IMSA, but basically the target was to finish in front of them and this race was quite good,” said Lapierre.

“The end of the year was very strong for us, so it’s nice and what we wanted to achieve so now it’s going to the next step for next year.”

Jamie Klein contributed to this report