Mick Schumacher will make his big debut in a new discipline, endurance, in 2024. The 24-year-old German was selected by Alpine among the six drivers who will be at the wheel of the two A424s for the 2024 WEC season, the championship of world of specialty. Schumacher, without an official steering wheel since his departure from Haas at the end of 2022, tested the car during a test day at Jerez in Spain.
It therefore met the expectations of Bruno Famin, vice-president of Motorsport Alpine, in charge of supervising all of the brand’s sporting programs. “We were keen to recruit drivers who were not only fast and reliable, but also had real team spirit and good racing intelligence,” noted Famin in the announcement press release. Mick will take his first steps in the discipline, but his enthusiasm for the project and his desire to integrate are palpable. I’m sure he will be a real asset. »
This will not, however, deprive him of his place as reserve driver at Mercedes. The German team also communicated this Wednesday to announce that he will still be in office in 2024.
Lapierre “mentor of young pilots”
Among the six other drivers, we find four French people, including three who were already present in the program last year (in LMP2): Nicolas Lapierre (39 years old), who “will be the mentor of the young drivers” according to Famin, Matthieu Vaxivière (28 years old) and Charles Milesi (22 years old). Paul-Loup Chatin (32 years old), who had already known Signatech-Alpine around ten years ago, arrives and will make his debut in the premier category. Finally the Austrian Ferdinand Habsburg (26 years old), who won the 24 hours of Le Mans in LMP2 with Milesi in 2021, completes the squad.
The trios making up each crew and the colors of the A424 will be officially revealed on February 7 during Alpine’s official season launch. After a prologue in Qatar on February 24 and 25, the competition will really begin, still on the Losail circuit, with an 1812 km event on March 2. “We are less than 100 days away from the first race of the 2024 season, the tests are almost coming to an end and the team is now complete: we can’t wait to see our beautiful A424s with these pilots, underlines Philippe Sinault, the Team Principal. There is an interesting complementarity between the loyal and known drivers of the team, who are unifying, and the new faces who have been able to surprise us in recent years. »
