It took five WEC races before Mick Schumacher finally bagged his first point in the World Endurance Championship. In Toyota’s dominant victory in the 6-hour race in Sao Paulo, the former Formula 1 driver finished tenth alongside his Alpine teammates Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere.
A success for the French car manufacturer at just the right time, after both Alpine A424s had previously fallen victim to annoying engine failures at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Schumacher was at the wheel of the car with starting number #36 for 116 of the 236 laps and completed the longest workload of the trio with a driving time of 2 hours 56 minutes. This was also because his team-mate Vaxiviere was not feeling well. Schumacher took part in both the opening and final stints.
Mick Schumacher: “We can and must improve”
“I really enjoyed the clean race,” WEC debutant Schumacher was quoted as saying in an Alpine press release. “I had a lot of track time and some nice battles. With slightly different decisions we could have fought for a better place, but we still scored our first point of the season. We have the potential and the speed for more points, so we still have a long way to go.”
Before the sixth WEC race in Austin, Texas (September 1, 2024), “we can and must improve in many areas,” added Schumacher. This probably meant, among other things, the complex tire strategy in the race. Alpine had decided to send both LMDh cars into the race on hard Michelin tyre compounds. One of the two factory Porsches, a BMW, Peugeot and Lamborghini also relied on this choice. Toyota and three Porsches, on the other hand, opted for medium tyres all around.
Schumacher had qualified the Alpine in eleventh place and took the start on Sunday in front of 73,205 spectators (over the weekend). The 25-year-old initially fell back three positions before fighting back and handing over the Alpine in ninth place on lap 79 after his double stint.
After the first pit stop on lap 43, the Alpine strategists decided not to change tires, which meant that Schumacher had to struggle with the deteriorating hard tires at the end of his second stint, but he did his job confidently and had some impressive duels with Robert Kubica’s AF-Corse Ferrari or Rene Rast’s BMW-LMDh.
Alpine team boss: “We lacked some understanding about the tires”
“We lacked some understanding of the tyres in these conditions with very different temperatures,” admitted Signatech Alpine team boss Philippe Sinault. “We leave Interlagos with a lot of useful information in this area. Both crews delivered a strong performance, the team made some good pit stops and the #36 scored its first point. We need to apply what we have learned to reduce the gap to the competition.”
The #36 crew around Schumacher started the race with a slight disadvantage because replacing the turbocharger in the second free practice session cost a lot of track time. In the race, the adapted Formula 2 engines from Mecachrome lasted the distance this time, but tire wear in general proved to be tricky in Sao Paulo, where the WEC was last hosted ten years ago.
Schumacher significantly faster than teammates
“Overall, it was a flawless race, although we lacked pace at times,” summed up the Frenchman Lapierre. “The choice of tires was tricky because of the warm temperatures on Sunday. The first point for our team is positive, but we have to analyze the race in order to continue to improve.” The sister Alpine with starting number #35 (Habsburg, Milesi, Chatin) missed out on its third points haul of the current season in twelfth place, also due to an early spin by Paul Loup Chatin.
Schumacher was once again the fastest driver of the #36 crew and completed his personal best time in 1:26.837 minutes (lap 3) – making him significantly faster than Lapierre (1:28.813) and the ailing Vaxiviere (1:28.239).
Chatin in the #35 car managed the best time across all teams this time (1:26.500 minutes), but the gap to the dominant Toyota was around 1.7 seconds. In the end, the pace of the two A424s more or less corresponded to their positions in the results list, which can certainly be seen as a success for WEC newcomer Alpine.