Mick Schumacher’s Alpine A424 gets to keep its place in the Hyperpole – He was found guilty, but the penalty has no effective consequences
The stewards of the 24 Hours of Le Mans have made their decision in the Mick Schumacher case, giving the former Formula 1 driver a lenient outcome. Although the Alpine driver was found guilty of ignoring a yellow flag in qualifying, the Alpine 36 remains tenth in the standings.
The sports commissioners – Jean-Francois Veroux, Michael Schwägerl, Yves Bacquelaine, Tomas Kunc, Faisal Al-Shaife and Chris Geefroy – deleted all the lap times that the son of Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher had set in qualifying up to that point.
However, Schumacher set his fastest lap of 3:23.945 minutes, which secured him tenth place and thus qualification for the Hyperpole, after the incident. This sequence of events makes the penalty meaningless in terms of sporting law.
“It was a little more difficult than expected,” admitted the 26-year-old. “Nevertheless, we are satisfied with tenth place under these circumstances, because I think we got the maximum out of our package in this case. But we still have work to do – luckily, we still have a few free practice sessions in which we can work on that.”
“We’re looking forward to the first Hyperpole session, but we still have two practice sessions to go before that. That will give us the opportunity to continue fine-tuning both the race and qualifying set-up. The team did a great job preparing everything – overall it was a bit tedious, but I think we’re getting the best out of it.”
When asked whether he feels that things are moving in the right direction looking back on the test day and the first free practice session, he remains cautious:
“That remains to be seen. At the moment, it’s very difficult to assess what the other teams are doing. We’re focusing entirely on ourselves. It’s always up and down anyway, especially with the changing conditions. So we’ll have to wait and see how things look on Saturday – then I’ll be able to give a better assessment.”
Schumacher not the only one penalized
In addition to Schumacher’s Alpine, the Porsche 4 (Nasr/Tandy/Wehrlein) and the Proton-Porsche 99 (Jani/Pino/Varrone) received the same penalty for the same offense. These penalties also have no real consequences. Felipe Nasr also set his fastest time at the end, and Neel Jani was not qualified for pole position anyway, finishing 20th.
For Aston Martin, whose two cars narrowly missed out on the Hyperpole, this means that their last hope of a late entry has been dashed. The Aston Martin 009 (Riberas/Sörensen/De Angelis) narrowly missed out on qualifying in 16th place and could have moved up if Schumacher had been disqualified.
The Toyota 7 (Conway/Kobayashi/de Vries) also remains out in 17th place and will have to watch the Hyperpole for the second time since 2024.
