Enduring talks

Discussions have been held with Mick Schumacher regarding a possible drive in the World Endurance Championship in 2024 with Alpine F1.

Interim Team Principal Bruno Famin has confirmed talks with Schumacher, who has been acting as Mercedes’ F1 reserve driver this season after losing his race seat at Haas at the end of 2022.

“It’s true that we are talking with Mick about the possibility to race in our endurance programme with the A424,” said Famin about the discussion of Alpine preparing to return to the top level of endurance racing in the new Hypercar category of the World Endurance Championship, with the aim of also adding to their 24 Hours of Le Mans victory back in 1978.

“It would be a good opportunity for both parties, I think,” he added. “But for the time being we are just talking and hopefully we will organise a test soon.”

Famin, who was drafted in as their temporary team boss during a leadership overhaul that happened shortly before the summer break, also added an update on how the squad is progressing.

“We made some quite good, quite big changes at the end of July within the team,” he explained. “This created a new mind-set on the trackside team. I’m happy with what I’ve seen so far. I think we made some quite good races in terms of strategy execution since that.

“I’m still assessing the factories, both, with the goal to really see how to extract more performance, and I think one of the key things is trying to get all the people working together.”

He added that the team has ‘a lot of potential’ but that the difficulty is to put everybody and everything together to create more performance, which is what he is assessing now. Alpine is currently sixth in the Constructor Standings with 84 points. The next race of the season will be the Formula 1 Qatar Airways Qatar Grand Prix 2023 on Sunday.