Hurt Habsburg could miss out on Imola race

Alpine World Endurance Championship driver Ferdinand Habsburg suffered back injuries during testing at Motorland Aragon last month that threaten to rule him out of upcoming rounds of the series. The Austrian sustained two broken vertebrae in the accident aboard one of the French manufacturer’s A424 LMDHS on 27 March at the Spanish circuit.

It is still unclear whether Habsburg, who was classified seventh in the 2024

WEC opener in Qatar last month aboard the Alpine he shares with Charles Milesi and Paul-loup Chatin, will be fit to race at Imola on 21 April. A statement from Alpine said that his period of recovery

“has not yet been defined”.

A return to the cockpit for round two of the WEC in Italy appears to be a long shot, but the following event at Spa on 11 May remains a realistic target. Alpine has Jules Gounon in place as a reserve, although it is unclear whether his commitments as a factory Mercedes GT3 driver in the GT World Challenge Asia on the Imola weekend would take precedence.

The accident happened at Turn 7 at Motorland during the course of a 30-hour endurance test with a single car. No cause of the incident has been revealed by Alpine because investigations remain ongoing, but the head-on nature of the impact that resulted in the injuries points towards some kind of technical failure.

Habsburg was taken to hospital in nearby

Alcaniz, and after undergoing checks was discharged in the evening. Further examinations on his return to his Austrian homeland revealed that he had sustained “two fractured lumbar vertebrae with no neurological damage”, according to the statement from Alpine.

Chatin will step into Habsburg’s seat in Cool Racing’s LMP2 ORECA-GIBSON 07 for this weekend’s European Le Mans Series curtain-raiser at Barcelona.