Fréd Makowiecki is one of sportscar racing's veteran drivers. He raced for Porsche as a factory driver for over a decade, but this year made a big switch to Alpine for the FIA World Endurance Championship.
Only Endurance recently spoke to Makowiecki, about how he's adapted to the Alpine A424 compared to the Porsche 963, which he was a key part of developing right from the outset.
'In terms of driving style, the car is slightly different for sure,' said the 44-year-old.
Phil Oakley
'But in I would say in an easier way, because at the end the car is moulding to the driver.
'The Porsche is a great car, but quite specific to drive.
'If you really want to be fast [in the Porsche] you really need to, I would say, to drive in a certain way, where the car is sliding quite a lot, but not too much,' he continued.
'This car [the Alpine] is more, I would say classic, in a certain way more linked to the vehicle dynamics. Quite easy for a driver to understand because it's something we drove all our career, where it was not hybrid.
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'That's why this is quite nice. The engineer on that aspect made a very good job, and it's something which I like because also the cars are very good front.
'I'm the kind of driver, I need to feel the front limit, because I'm not a big fan of understeer.
'I need to have a sharp front to be capable to bring the car into the corner as I want, and definitely [in] the Alpine is the strength of the car.
'That's why I got lucky to come here and don't get a car, which is not fitting at all to my driving side.'
Phil Oakley
However, because Makowiecki was the first driver to sample the Porsche 963 in the simulator, in early 2021, he said he'd adapted to it naturally over time.
However, 'when you jump in the car sometimes, it can not be easy in the Porsche', he concluded.
Makowiecki's results in the Alpine speak for themselves. The Frenchman, alongside his teammates Mick Schumacher and fellow countryman Jules Gounon in the #36 Alpine, has recorded two podiums in four races in this year's WEC championship, at Imola and Spa.
In addition, they led at Spa on pace while fighting with Ferrari for victory. While the race didn't go their way, taking third by just under a second from the #50 Ferrari crew and just 5.1 seconds behind the winning #51 Ferrari, it was a confident display from the Alpine trio that signals more is to come.
Le Mans didn't fall Alpine's way performance-wise, with the #36 trio finishing 10th, three laps down on the winning #83 Ferrari. The sister #35 Alpine crew fared only a little better, finishing ninth.
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Comparing Makowiecki to his teammates
If we look at how Makowiecki's comparing to his teammates in the first four races of the year, we can see he's right up there.
We've taken the top 20% average lap times for each of the six Alpine drivers, then calculated the percentage difference each was off the fastest in each race of this year.
As you can see, Paul-Loup Chatin was the fastest Alpine driver on average at Losail. Mick Schumacher has been the fastest at the following three rounds.
Makowiecki, meanwhile, was fifth fastest his first race with Alpine at Losail in Qatar, 0.546% slower than Chatin. He then cut this deficit in half at Imola, just 0.2% slower, before slipping back to being 0.434% off at Spa.
At Le Mans, he was the second quickest Alpine driver, 0.381% off Schumacher and just 0.012% faster than Chatin.
On average, Makowiecki was 0.390% off the fastest driver, Chatin or Schumacher, over the course of the year. This puts him third behind those two, and ahead of Gounon, Milesi and Habsburg.
Heading into the second half of the season, starting with the 6 Hours of São Paulo this coming weekend, it will be interesting to see if Alpine and Makowiecki can recover their podium form from earlier in the year.
Feature image: DPPI / WEC / Alpine
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