Back in WEC with Alpine, António Félix da Costa will benefit from his experience in Formula E

We may have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the LMP2 world championship title, and still being invited to a Rookie Test! This is the case for António Félix da Costa, who was able to test "for real" theAlpine A424 after a short Shakedown on the Bugatti Circuit at Le Mans. An opportunity to return to the Hypercar category in which it competed in 2023 with Jota, and to satisfy a certain amount of impatience.

"This test in Bahrain was a day I was really looking forward to."he told us after achieving the best time of the day. "I worked very hard to get back to this paddock, to this championship, and when we signed with AlpineI really started to get excited about finally being able to get behind the wheel for good. Watching the race on Saturday also made me really want to drive on Sunday. After two or three laps, I kind of woke up all my racing reflexes.Endurance"And it felt like I'd driven for the last time with Jota in LMP2 and Hypercar yesterday."

If the Portuguese, who distinguished himself right up to the gates of the F1 (Third in Formula Renault 3.5 in 2013) has for quite a few years now veered towards Endurance racing, but he remains nonetheless a driver of car seasoned, champion of Formula EHis experience in the all-electric championship, where he will represent Jaguar next season, could prove crucial, according to him.

“Formula E is undoubtedly the FIA ​​championship with the highest level of technology right now. There are so many software aids used, and the development of this software to modify the car's balance is enormous. A Hypercar certainly has 20 or 30% of the technology of a Formula E car. So all this knowledge is useful. We also have former Formula E engineers joining us, and together I think that will help us expand the realm of possibilities. There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes, a lot of development; I think we'll have a very busy, but very positive, winter. The goal of the whole team is to take a big step forward, compared to where we want to be next year.”

At the end of a busy day, "AFDC" set the fastest time on the final "official" day of testing in the 2025 World Endurance Championship. Nothing to brag about, but still enough to give them a little satisfaction of a job well done!

“Of course, it’s better to be first than last! But I don’t look at the lap times too closely. We didn’t do any qualifying simulations, but we still went after a few faster laps; we didn’t always run on a full tank. It was good for me to be able to feel how the car behaved on new tires, for example.”

Interview by Valentin Glo, in Sakhir (Bahrain).

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