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Alpine team principal Bruno Famin has refused to give Mick Schumacher a chance in the A524 F1 challenger for the 2024 season.
2024 will mark Mick Schumacher's debut in the World Endurance Championship, where he is set to race with Alpine. With him still serving his duties as a reserve driver for Mercedes, questions have been prompted regarding a test run for him with Alpine during the length of the season.
Clearing any such doubts, team principal Bruno Famin revealed that his contract is strictly for WEC and any F1 testing will be done by their reserve driver Jack Doohan. Speaking to the on-site media, he said:
"No, we cannot [Provide Schumacher a test in F1]," Motorsport quoted him.
"We don't plan because we have a reserve driver with Jack Doohan, and Mick is the Mercedes reserve driver. The contract we have with Mick is exclusively for endurance."
Mick Schumacher has not raced in F1 since the end of the 2022 season when his contract with Haas was not extended further. Although Mercedes signed him as their reserve driver later, he did not get a chance to put his foot down during a race.
In late November last year, the French team confirmed that Schumacher would drive for them in the 2024 season of the World Endurance Championship. This is set to be his first racing experience outside of the open-wheel category.
Alpine drivers unamused with the car heading into the 2024 F1 season
It was earlier reported by Auto Motor und Sport that the A524, Alpine's challenger for the 2024 season, has not turned out to be very reliable. Reports after the end of pre-season testing revealed that the car was "overweight and aerodynamically inefficient," and was also slow on both long stints and single-laps.
Esteban Ocon, while speaking about the car, revealed that the team is heading into the season on the "back foot." F1 quoted him as saying:
"We know we’re entering this season slightly on the back foot with the new car concept and the team is working incredibly hard to bring more performance to the car in the coming races."
He added that there is hope for stable improvement of the car during the season:
"The test session in Bahrain was extremely valuable and we learnt a lot about the new car and its characteristics. The car improved from the first to the last day in testing, so we’re hoping to see similar improvements over the course of the race weekend."
Pierre Gasly, too, spoke about the car's condition while talking to Sky Sports earlier. He stated that the car didn't "look great."
"To be fair I haven't really focussed on others because there's been so much going on our side. I don't think we look great. But at the same time, we still have a couple of days to really understand everything we've done. We've put the car upside down, and done a lot of tests."
Alpine had finished behind their competitors in the earlier season. Both McLaren and Aston Martin managed to develop much better and stay ahead of the team.
There is seemingly a lot that needs to be understood about the car because with the reported issues, it can also remain unstable, affecting their results throughout the season.
