Alpine announces new team-mates for Schumacher in WEC 2025

Mick Schumacher will be joined by Frederic Makowiecki and Jules Gounon in Alpine’s World Endurance Championship line-up for 2025. 

It means the ex-Formula 1 racer will have two new full-season team-mates in the #36 Alpine A424 LMDh for his second year of sportscar racing. 

In 2024 he was joined by Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere, who are now respectively sporting director and, it was revealed on the announcement of Alpine’s driver combinations on Wednesday, reserve for the Signatech-run Hypercar class squad. 

Schumacher was confirmed by Alpine for 2025 at the end of November last year, having previously refused to commit his future while F1 seats remained open.

Makowiecki has moved over to Alpine from Porsche, with which he raced in Hypercar in the 2023-24 WEC, after deciding that he needed a “new challenge”.

Gounon is graduating to a full-time race seat after undertaking four of the eight races last year in his role as reserve. 

The regular line-up of Charles Milesi, Ferdinand Habsburg and Paul-Loup Chatin in #35 is unchanged from Alpine’s first season with the A424 in 2024. 

#36 Alpine Endurance Team Alpine A424: Nicolas Lapierre, Mick Schumacher, Matthieu Vaxiviere

Photo by: Andreas Beil

Signatech boss Philippe Sinault explained that stability was one of the targets when putting together the 2025 driver line-up with Alpine motorsport boss Bruno Famin and Lapierre.

“We felt it was crucial to build on the strong foundations we had laid,” he explained. “Charles, Ferdinand, Mick and Paul-Loup have made huge contributions to setting up the project, showing real dedication.”

On Gounon, he said: “We knew that his GT experience would bring a lot to our Hypercar project from a technical point of view. 

“That was the case, so we were keen to promote him to the race team to build on what we set out to do a year ago.”

Sinault added that Makowiecki, who was the first driver to drive the Porsche 963 on both the simulator and the race track, is bringing “vast experience” to the Alpine programme.

Lapierre said that the French driver’s “technical background is exactly what we need at this phase of the project”.

Alpine’s A424 scored its first WEC podium at the Fuji round in September with Schumacher, Lapierre and Vaxiviere driving.

The sister car driven by Gounon, Habsburg and Chatin then finished fourth in the Bahrain season finale, which cemented Alpine’s fourth place in the manufacturers’ standings.