Milesi “Gutted” to Miss Out on Win After Alpine’s “Strong Pace”

Photo: Charly López/DPPI

Alpine driver Charles Milesi said he was “gutted” to miss out on Lone Star Le Mans glory, revealing a “big chunk of marbles” got stuck under the car and cost him when battling the victorious Ferrari.

The No. 35 Alpine A424 Milesi shared with Ferdinand Habsburg and Antonio Felix da Costa was a frontrunner throughout the FIA World Endurance Championship contest at the Circuit of The Americas but ultimately had to settle for third place.

Milesi had been running second behind the No. 7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid — which retired from the race in the final minutes with hydraulics woes — when the race resumed after a safety car period with 45 minutes remaining.

But he lost the place to the No. 50 Ferrari 499P of Nicklas Nielsen at Turn 8 in the closing stages when contending with both the discarded tire rubber and LMGT3 traffic.

A five-second penalty for an unsafe release from its pit box then meant the Alpine trio slipped behind the No. 38 Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac V-Series.R in the final classification, but third place still represented a first podium of the season for the French manufacturer.

“A good race overall, definitely, but a bit gutted we didn’t get a double podium or a victory this weekend,” was Milesi’s assessment. “I think we deserved it — the pace was quite strong.

“It’s a good result for the team with a P3 and P5, even though we could’ve optimized it a little bit more. For the team I think it’s good to have a podium for the dynamic for the end of the season.”

But Milesi reckoned more could have been done during the caution periods to ensure the track was free from the extensive amount of tire marbles that had accumulated in the hot conditions.

When asked about losing out to the victorious Ferrari, Milesi explained: “I got something stuck under the car, like a big chunk of marbles. I started to understeer and lost the rear of the car and nearly spun and I slid again on Turn 7.

“Then I got blocked by a GT3 and he (Nielsen) went on the outside of Turn 8 and I didn’t want to risk it.

“We were fighting for P2 and P3 so I thought I’m going to take it like this.

“We had plenty of time to clean the track. If we had three/four laps under safety car just to clean the track a bit would’ve maybe made the end of the race a bit less messy for everyone.”

Bamber: Cadillac “Overachieved” With Second Place

The beneficiary of the late race Alpine penalty was the No. 38 Cadillac crew of Earl Bamber, Jack Aitken and Sebastien Bourdais, which was promoted to its best result of the season so far in second.

Bamber had led the race during the middle stages but was unable to keep the No. 7 Toyota behind when at a tire disadvantage and the New Zealander reckoned the JOTA squad overperformed by finishing as runner-up.

“When I look at the pace of everyone else, I think we maybe overachieved today with second place but we’re very, very happy with that,” said Bamber.

When asked if he thought it was possible to challenge for the victory, he added: “I think at one stage when I was leading we had a good gap in front of everyone — I think we virtually had a 20-second lead.

“If it had continued green, we probably could’ve won the race. But that’s the beauty of WEC racing at the moment, there’s a lot of strategy and lot going on so at the end, for us to come away in second place after defying the odds with the strategy we’re very happy.”

Source: Sports Car 365