Alpine primed ahead of season finale
Contrasting emotions from Alpine trio in Bahrain
It’s definitely different approaches from the drivers for Alpine Elf Team heading into the final race of the 2022 FIA World Endurance Championship, the Bapco 8 Hours of Bahrain.
We posed our questions to the drivers of the #36 Alpine Elf Team Alpine A480 - Gibson, Matthieu Vaxivière, André Negrão and Nicolas Lapierre ahead of the race they enter level on points with their Toyota rivals, bidding for overall glory this season.
What’s the feeling and emotion heading into the final race of the season?
MV: No particular emotion, I just keep focused for the last race.
AN: My feeling is amazing! Just to arrive in the last race of the season and fight with Toyota; it’s already a big result!
NL: I'm super excited to go to Bahrain. It's going to be, for sure, an amazing final. It's so great to come into the race level in terms of points and I think this has never happened in my career before like this. I’m very much looking forward to it and it is for situations like this that we are doing racing. This what I like, and this is what I race for.
What has been the highlight for you personally from this season?
MV: I couldn’t hide that it was Monza, definitely.
AN: I think for me was Monza, definitely, because we don’t expect that result and we make a huge result.
NL: It has been an amazing season in terms of performance from the whole team. We had to battle very hard this season to win races, especially the last one in Monza. That is for me, at the minute, the highlight of the season.
What has been the most challenging event for you this season?
MV: In terms of racing, Monza, however Le Mans was challenging with a lot of difficulties.
AN: For me Sebring, because of the race track temperature and it was the first race of the year.
NL: Monza was a very, very tough battle for the whole race, for every lap. We had to push like hell to get this win!
What’s the key to a strong performance in Bahrain?
MV: To finish the race.
AN: Get the job done as we have done in the other races, but we need a nice BOP for this event. We have already a big team and my team-mates make a super job this year!! So, we are ready.
NL: I hope we can finish on a high. I hope we have a nice battle.
How close do you expect the battle to be?
MV: Too early to think!
AN: I hope very close to them, like we did in Monza! It should be a nice end of the season. I think we made a super job this year, and independently of the result we can be proud of our job this season. It was not easy to get this far and we made it beautifully until now!!
NL: I hope we're going have the same kind of race in Bahrain as we did in Monza with two cars fighting each other. That will be great for us and nice for the fans too. I'm really looking forward to it.
