Alpine to reveal its 2024 LMDh contender at Le Mans
Alpine will reveal the LMDh car with which it will return to the World Endurance Championship’s Hypercar class in 2024 at next month’s Le Mans 24 Hours.
The yet-to-be-named ORECA LMP2-based hybrid contender will be revealed on 7 June at the Circuit de la Sarthe ahead of the centenary edition of the French endurance classic.
It will succeed the Alpine A480-Gibson with which the French manufacturer competed in the WEC in 2021-22, before returning to the LMP2 class this year with an ORECA 07.
The A480 was an ORECA-built car originally designed for the defunct Rebellion Racing team, meaning it will be the first Hypercar that will be manufactured directly by Alpine - although it will be based on ORECA's next-generation LMP2 chassis as part of the LMDh regulations.
Alpine intends to run two cars in the WEC next year, when the Hypercar field will be bolstered further by entries from Lamborghini and BMW.
Details about the Alpine's LMDh car are sparse at the moment, but executive director Bruno Famin revealed last year that it won’t use an F1 engine as the base of its powertrain, citing high costs.
A spec-hybrid system from Bosch, Xtrac and Williams Advanced Engineering will be mated to the Alpine-designed internal combustion engine.
Insight: Inside the spec hybrid spine of LMDh cars
Alpine has elected to wait until the second year of the LMDh regulations to debut its car, having first announced plans for a WEC programme in October 2021.
#36 Alpine Elf Team Alpine A480 - Gibson of Andre Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere
Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images
It will be joined on the grid by LMDh cars from Porsche, Cadillac, BMW and Lamborghini as well as LMH cars built by Toyota, Porsche, Ferrari, Glickenhaus and Vanwall.
Alpine is expected to put all its focus on its Hypercar project next year, with its 2023 LMP2 programme thought to be a stopgap until its LMDh car was ready for 2024.
The LMP2 class will be dropped from the WEC anyway in 2024, although the ACO has promised 15 entries at next year’s Le Mans.
Alpine does not intend to race in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, where LMDh cars are also eligible to race in the GTP class as part of a unification of rules between the two series.
An Alpine/Renault car last took outright victory at Le Mans in 1978, when Jean-Pierre Jaussaud, Didier Pironi beat the Martini Porsche 936s in their V6-powered A442B.
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