Fuji star Milesi tips Alpine to build upon breakthrough result
While his own personal ambitions of reaching the FIA World Endurance Championship podium were dashed by a late-race penalty, Fuji star Charles Milesi is confident that Alpine Endurance Team can build upon its milestone Japanese weekend moving forward.
Milesi has been a standout performer throughout 2024 – his maiden campaign in WEC’s headlining Hypercar category – and he looked set to reap the rewards of those stellar displays in the season’s penultimate round.
The young Frenchman pulled out a rapid lap time to put the leading Alpine A424 sixth on the grid in qualifying – the #35 crew’s fourth Hyperpole appearance from seven attempts this year, and barely a quarter-of-a-second adrift of the outright benchmark.
His good work, however, looked like it had been undone mere moments into the six-hour race the next day, when team-mate Ferdinand Habsburg found himself innocently caught up in a multi-car collision on lap two, sending the Austrian into a half-spin and tumbling down the order. It would prove to be the catalyst for a magnificent fightback.
Following solid stints by Habsburg and Jules Gounon, with two hours left on the clock, Milesi punched in a new fastest lap that would not subsequently be beaten. He proceeded to pull off a succession of superb passes to climb the order, opportunistically relieving home hero Ryo Hirakawa of third approaching the final hour as the pair lapped one of the LMGT3 contenders.
That appeared to have secured the A424 its breakthrough top three finish in the Hypercar class, only for a late drive-through penalty for involuntary contact with the #81 Corvette to relegate the #35 to the tail-end of the top ten and leave the sister #36 entry to successfully pick up the pursuit of the podium.
With the bit between his teeth, former WEC LMP2 champion Milesi grittily fought back to take the chequered flag less than 12 seconds shy of the rostrum, determinedly overhauling the #94 Peugeot for seventh on the line by a scant eight thousandths-of-a-second.
“It was a good race overall,” reflected the 23-year-old rising endurance racing star. “We had a good car from the start of the weekend, which allowed us to fight for the podium. That gives us even more confidence in our potential. There’s one race left this season, so we need to keep working to find further improvements for the future.”
Indeed, buoyed by its best result since rejoining the series’ top flight, Alpine will head to the forthcoming Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain (31 October – 2 November) fully focussed on concluding the campaign with another strong performance.
“The 6 Hours of Fuji highlighted the encouraging progress made by the team,” acknowledged Bruno Famin, Vice-President of Alpine Motorsports. “From the outset of the project, we have approached this year as a learning season, and that is beginning to pay off.
“However, not everything is perfect yet. We’ve taken a step forward by battling at the sharp end for the first time, but there’s still plenty of work to do and steps to take. We aim to continue learning and extracting our potential in all areas over the coming months.”
