Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Alpine’s A424 sports car program is well into development ahead of next season’s FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), building toward final announcements of what the program should look like when it debuts next March. Driver lineups are still undetermined after the team’s most recent wave of tests, but a recent Formula 1 driver headlines the group that have been behind the wheel in testing.
The team tested 2020 Formula 2 champion and former Haas F1 driver Mick Schumacher this past week, building on last month’s conversations about a potential signing. The testing laps were Schumacher’s first in a sports car and no future tests are officially scheduled, but it brings the team one step closer to a marquee signing for one of its six open seats. Schumacher came to Formula 1 as part of Ferrari’s junior team before joining Mercedes as a test driver this past offseason, but a WEC tie-up with his former F1 rivals at Alpine would not be all that strange in a world where Schumacher’s testing duties with Mercedes also include time in a McLaren.
While driver decisions are the most immediate concern, the team still has American expansion to think about, too. Racing the A424 in America would make sense ahead of the brand’s plans to enter the market by 2027, but a potential tie-up with Andretti Autosport discussed last season seems to be off the table now that Andretti owns part of the Wayne Taylor Racing Acura factory program.
The most obvious partner for an IMSA program is instead Meyer Shank Racing, the former Acura team that had won the past two 24 hour races at Daytona before losing its Acura slot to an expanding Wayne Taylor Racing with Andretti Autosport. Alpine VP of Motorsports Bruno Famin confirmed to Sportscar365 that the two have already been in contact about a potential program that could start as early as 2025, but any American program would come after a WEC program is established. That plan is, fittingly, the opposite of what the U.S.-based Acura has discussed for its own expansion into Europe in the near future.
READ MORE: Mick Schumacher’s Possible Future In Sport Diminishes Once More after a controversial..
Alpine’s sports car lineup should be determined well ahead of the beginning of the 2024 FIA WEC season in March. The brand joins BMW and Lamborghini as new entries for 2024, bringing the total count of major manufacturers racing in the European sports car championship to eight.
