Mick Schumacher and his teammates will probably have to compete in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) until the end of the season with the defect-prone engine concept that paralyzed both Alpine hypercars after six hours of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Alpine Motorsport Director Bruno Famin, who continues to lead the LMDh programme after moving up from Formula 1, tells Motorsport.com, the global sister publication of Motorsport-Total.com
in the Motorsport Network that it is “most likely” that the planned update will not be released this year.
“It's a question of lead time. You have to define what you need, then produce the new part and finally validate it. It's a pretty lengthy process,” he explains.
Alpine is struggling with a problem with the valves of the 3.4-litre V6 turbo engine from Mecachrome. This was known since the start of the season, but only became apparent after the 24-hour mark during the 30-hour tests. At Le Mans, however, the full-throttle portion is much higher, which caught the Signatech team and the Renault subsidiary off guard.
There is no immediate need for action, as the longest race still to come is the 8 Hours of Bahrain at the end of the season. The car lasted for ten hours at the start of the season in Qatar, and there were no problems in Sao Paulo recently either.
Famin assures that the workaround using the engine maps would not cost any performance. However, it is unclear whether this only applies to qualifying. In Le Mans and now again in Austin, the Alpines were inconspicuous in practice, but suddenly appeared in qualifying.
Nothing underlines this better than Charles Milesi's qualifying performance in Austin. While Mick Schumacher was struggling with a door problem, the Frenchwoman put the Alpine #35 (Chatin/Habsburg/Milesi) on fourth place on the grid.
The key for the 23-year-old was handling the medium tires from Michelin, which are used in all hypercars: “Getting the tire in the right window was the key to this performance in qualifying.” The #35 had lost a lot of driving time in the first practice session on Friday due to a defect.
The question remains: Can Alpine implement this in the race this time or will the engine workaround cost performance? “I don't know if we will have the performance to stay at the front, but we will try. We are in the right part of the field and it is much easier from there than if you start further back.”
This is the challenge facing Mick Schumacher. The German missed the Hyperpole because he had to contend with an open door and an insect in the car. The Alpine #36 (Lapierre/Schumacher/Vaxiviere) will start the race from 13th place. He recently scored his first World Championship point in Brazil.
