Alpine’s Milesi Sets Sights on Points Finish at Spa WEC
Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium – In the lead-up to the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, part of the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) calendar, Alpine Endurance Team’s Charles Milesi is optimistic about his squad’s chances of scoring points in the GT category.
Milesi, the 2021 LMP2 champion, explained that reaching the top 10 shootout in the car’s third competitive outing had helped to lift spirits in the camp after both Signatech-run machines were involved in a first-corner tangle in Imola, Italy, and also received post-race time penalties for driver time infringements.
“It’s good for mental heals in a way because after Imola, for sure, we were all a bit down,” the 23-year-old acknowledged. “And now, obviously, Hyperpole, it’s a lot better for us, putting us in a good mood for the race.”
The #35 Alpine A424 entry Milesi shares with Paul-Loup Chatin and Jules Gounon will line up seventh on the grid, four spots ahead of the sister #36 car qualified by Mick Schumacher.
Milesi believes that Alpine’s improvement over Imola, a circuit he called “probably the worst track for our car,” is partly due to the Spa circuit’s characteristics, which favor the car’s strengths in medium- and high-speed corners.
“Because we don’t have a lot of slow speed, then we look a lot better,” he said. Milesi also attributed Alpine’s upswing to “a good step with the kerb riding, also the traction control” across practice, despite not conducting a pre-event test at the Belgian circuit.
However, the Frenchman acknowledges that Alpine is still learning tire management techniques, with the abrasive Spa surface expected to result in significant degradation during the race.
“The gap can be massive; you can easily be one second quicker by managing the tires more on the first laps,” he noted. “Also with the traffic, it’s quite difficult because we can take some marbles, and the marbles for the mediums are not really great compared to the hard; you can be more affected by that and it takes sometimes two or three laps to have the tires back.”
After being forced to stop his car on track at the end of the Hyperpole session due to a loss of power, Milesi added that “the main target is to take some experience still” and have a trouble-free race. Nevertheless, he is optimistic that returning to the points is a possibility after placing seventh with a well-executed fuel-saving strategy in the Qatar season-opener.
“If we have a good pace and a good strategy, I think we can aim for some points maybe,” he said. “But I think it will be tight between everybody; you can see that already, even in the free practice, it was quite tight.”
The 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, the third round of the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship, is scheduled to take place on [Current Date].
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