Mick Schumacher wants second bite of the cherry at Le Mans

Mick Schumacher’s first taste of the Le Mans 24 hours ended less than a third into the race as his #36 car retired with engine issues.

But the ex-Formula 1 driver was still impressing when in the car as Alpine also had to retire the #35 machine before Schumacher’s car.

It was a disastrous race for the home team as they were the only Hypercar manufacturer that failed to finish one of their cars.

But with that said, Schumacher believes there were plenty of positives to take.

Schumacher told Racingnews365: "We were very fast up to that point, which is a very big positive. We had an engine issue, which led us to retiring both cars, unfortunately.

“But again, I think not to have too much focus on the bad sides, but actually more focus on positives.

"We've been here for many, many days, driving around this track for quite a while. And we've learned a lot about it, we've prepared it.

“I think we grew together as a team, we managed to put stuff behind us, in form of issues that we've encountered.

"And then we really moved on from them to get to a point where we were fighting for pole, we were fighting for good positioning in the race, up to that point.

“And also, personally, my stint was very positive. So I'm really, really happy about that."

Not far from the top five at the time of their retirement with the #35 car, Alpine were competitive against the likes of Ferrari, Porsche, Toyota and Cadillac, who throughout the weekend appeared to have something more in their locker.

But Alpine did show that their cars were fast, but with reliability just as important at Le Mans, learning from their issues will be key going forward, said the German driver.

"I think now, at this point, what is left to do is just to make sure that we as a team understand what happened, so that we can fix it for next time, “ said Schumacher.