A frustrating race for Alpine at the 8 Hours of Bahrain
Involved in a collision right from the first turn, the French team could have hoped for a good outcome for their final race in LMP2. However, the result turned out to be quite different.
The number 36 had however achieved a small feat in the qualifying session. With a second place on the grid, the trio of Milesi-Canal-Vaxivière, Alpine had not done better this season. Until now, the quick lap exercise had remained a challenging episode for the French.
However, in Bahrain, everything worked out well for the 36, but a little less for the 35 which remained at the back of the grid. Despite this mixed result, the team with the A arrow could hope for great things in the race. A domain where they are more successful.
But from the first turn, an accident caused a major commotion in which car number 36 was involved. It had to restart at the back of the pack and by the end of the first lap, it already had a significant delay to the frontrunners. This ultimately compromised the rest of the race.
A page turns
“We were thirty seconds behind the leaders and had to change the front bonnet before the end of their relay. However, towards the end of the race, we managed to regain a good level of performance with both of our cars to compete on equal terms with the leading cars,” laments Philippe Sinault, the director of the WEC team.
For its last race in the LMP2 category, Alpine finishes in 7th and 10th place in its category. A chapter closes today, but we must rely on all the elements that allowed us to build and give a soul to this story: the victories, the titles, but also the drivers, engineers, and mechanics who trusted us to write these beautiful pages, remembers Philippe Sinault.
