Mick Schumacher has not yet decided what he will do in 2024, and one of the options to continue his career is a switch to endurance racing. Last week he tested behind the wheel of the Alpine A424 hypercar for the first time, and over the weekend in Austin, after returning to his duties as reserve Mercedes driver, he spoke about this new experience.
“The flying experience is completely different. The sports prototype is a relatively large and relatively heavy car. Her cockpit is completely enclosed, so at first I felt a bit claustrophobic,” said Mick. “But you get used to it pretty quickly.” If we talk about the nature of work on the track, the difference is that in endurance racing you share a car with partners, and this is interesting in its own way.
The car has to be able to withstand 24-hour marathons, and this has its own problems. For example, because you cannot see the wheels, it is impossible to understand whether the tires are worn or not. There are only small indicator lights on the instrument panel to indicate this.
When you sit in a completely closed cockpit and feel no headwind at all, the sensations are somewhat abstract. The most noticeable innovation for me was the cockpit ventilation duct, which is located at the rear of the cockpit, and I was not prepared for that at first.
During testing at Jerez the Alpine was set to a high level of downforce, a setting often used at Le Mans, but it left the car feeling slow and unwieldy. But this is of course also due to the fact that it weighs a ton. At the same time, hypercars are equipped with a traction control system, which gives you a completely different sensation behind the wheel.”
What choice Mick will make next year will be known later, but Toto Wolff, the head of the Mercedes team, emphasized in Austin that Schumacher will remain a reserve driver if this can be combined with performance for Alpine in the endurance races: “We are still going to analyze everything in detail.” , and let’s hope we can find some options.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
