Nicolas Lapierre Ends Pro Driving Career

A post today on Instagram confirms that Nico Lapierre has announced his immediate retirement from professional driving.

The Frenchman, a current Alpine factory Hypercar driver as well as Team Principal at Cool Racing through his CLX racing outfit will therefore not complete the season award the Alpine, completing his career with a podium finish at Fuji.

Whilst Nico has confirmed he will continue in the sport he has not yet revealed what his next posting will be, but a senior management role at Alpine has been rumoured in French media reports in recent weeks.

Lapierre’s sportscar racing career began in 2007 after success in single seaters that included a win at the Macau Grand Prix, GP2 race wins and the 1 Grand Prix title in 2005/2006.

His first race in sports cars came at Le Mans in 2007 aboard an Oreca-run Saleen, the start of a long and fruitful relationship with Hugues de Chaunac’s outfit that saw no fewer than 176 races in cars built, prepared, entered and/ or supported by the Signes-based outfit )( in contrast just seven races in GT and Dpi were with teams not involving Oreca product or personnel!)

After missing the 2008 race he never missed another up to 2024 scoring four LMP2 class wins (One with KCMG and three with Signatech Alpine) and to overall podium finishes (both with Toyota), plus an LMP2 Pro-Am podium in 2023.

There were eight overall wins in the FIA WEC plus a further nine wins in LMP2 in WEC where he claimed the LMP2 Championship in both 2016 and 2018/19.

There were a pair of wins at the 12 Hours of Sebring too – for Oreca Team Matmut in 2011 when the privately run Peugeot 908 HDi FAP humbled the brand new factory 90X, and in 2018 in the Patron Team ESM Nissan DPi!

We’ll reflect more on his driving career in due course – but for now we’ll simply say Thank You Nico – we can’t wait for what’s next!