Alpine's new attempt to scale Le Mans heights

By:

Gary Watkins

Jul 13, 2023, 2:05 PM

When Alpine officially launched its new LMDh challenger at Le Mans last month, it was almost exactly 45 years since the manufacturer enjoyed glory in the legendary enduro. Now it is attempting to combine all the ingredients to replicate that success on its full top-class return

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There was a nice symmetry when, on the Friday of last month’s Le Mans 24 Hours, Alpine unveiled the prototype with which it will attempt to rekindle past glories in endurance racing. The French enduro happened to fall on the same dates this year as in 1978, when the Renault marque finally triumphed in a race in which it had had a long, if interrupted, presence since 1963.

Much was made of that victory when the covers came off the new World Endurance Championship contender, which for the moment is known as the A424_ß. You could easily have misread that as A442B, the machine Didier Pironi and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud took to victory 45 years earlier, give or take the odd three days.

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Gary Watkins

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Gary Watkins has, for reasons best known to himself, devoted all his working life to covering sportscar racing. This season is his 33rd as a motorsport journalist, during which time he has reported on major long-distance events on four continents and approaching 80 24-hour races. He reckons a degree in political philosophy makes him well qualified for covering the sometimes Machiavellian world of international sportscars.

Gary, who also writes for Motor Sport, Autocourse, RACER and others, lives in Surbiton close to the former workshops of the Cooper Formula 1 team but spends more time on the road than at home for most of the year.