Alpine’s Hypercar reserve driver Jules Gounon is eager to soak up as much information and track time as possible this weekend in Fuji. The Frenchman — who was thrown in at the deep end as the substitute for the injured Ferdinand Habsburg earlier this year at Imola and Spa — is back for a third start in the No. 35 A424 and senses a prime opportunity to impress.
In April when he received the call to race in Italy following Habsburg’s crash in testing, the situation was far from ideal. He lacked track time and the Signatech-run Alpine effort was still finding its feet with its new car.
Now, though, at the back end of the campaign, Gounon rejoins the team at an exciting moment, fresh from its best result of the season just two weeks ago at Circuit of The Americas. There the A424 took a real step forward in performance terms and the No. 35 finished fifth.
“Everything was not ready for my debut, I had only one test day in the car before I arrived in Imola and everything was new,” he reflected in conversation with RACER. “I didn’t adapt to the systems and I didn’t do any work beforehand because I wasn’t expecting to drive. It was difficult, especially as I didn’t have any relevant downforce experience before in single-seaters or anything like that. All I did was one LMP2 test to convince Alpine to give me a reserve role!
“Spa was better, but still hard. All I had was 10 laps in each practice session and then in the races I did 45 minutes in Imola because of the changing conditions and in Spa, I did 50 minutes because of the red flag. It’s not a lot, so I’m definitely not where I want to be yet.
“However, coming back I can see a lot of progress since my last race, definitely,” he said. “Everyone has worked hard and it shows. The car feels much better, more consistent and more natural. The systems are better and that’s the key. There’s still a disadvantage compared to Porsche and Ferrari, who have more cars running and more time to analyze. But we all have the goal of building this.”
Better still, he has had ample time to mentally prepare for this cameo at Fuji in the seat usually occupied by Paul-Loup Chatin. To aid his development, this appearance was written into his contract before the season began, he’s had the weekend circled in his calendar for months.