Sophia Floersch joins the Alpine Academy ahead of F3 return

At last night’s launch of its 2023 F1 car, Alpine confirmed that Sophia Floersch has joined its driver academy ahead of her return to the Formula 3 championship with PHM Racing later this year.

The 22-year-old had explored the likes of DTM and endurance racing in recent seasons - making her third LMP2 appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2022 - but is heading back to single-seaters having last raced in F3 three years ago.

“Joining the Alpine Academy is an honour and a major opportunity in my career” said Floersch. “I have great ambitions and I am sure by applying the knowledge and expertise from Alpine, it will only help me grow. I can't wait to start this new chapter and represent the Alpine brand on the global stage.”

Meanwhile Alpine has also promoted British driver Abbi Pulling from brand affiliate to fully-fledged academy driver, with the 19-year-old due to compete in the inaugural F1 Academy series in 2023 with Carlin.

The signings mark the start of a big push to build up Alpine’s Rac(H)er female driver programme, which has identified half a dozen young talents to support in karting.

They are Aiva Anagnostiadis (Australia), Angélina Proenca (France), Chiara Battig (Switzerland), Lisa Billard (France), Maria Chiara Nardelli (Italy) and Kaur Kera Sukhmani (UK).

All of Alpine’s academy drivers will have access to a new Human High-Performance Centre in Enstone, which will give drivers individual training programmes to follow as well as conducting research into their physical, physiological and cognitive data.

“With Rac(H)er, we have been working relentlessly over the past six months, with the support of Renault Group, not only to encourage reflection, but also to put in place concrete actions to move forwards,” said Claire Mesnier, Alpine’s VP of human resources.

“Now that we have shifted our organisation’s culture, we accelerate forwards with the creation of the Human High-Performance Centre as well as by the deployment of numerous internal initiatives to empower women and encourage new generations to join the motorsport industry, whether engineers, mechanics, or drivers.”

On top of that, Alpine has also brought in the likes of two-time Olympic gold medalist Nicola Adams and Zara Rutherford (the youngest ever female pilot to fly around the globe solo) to provide inspiration to its drivers.

Oh, and World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane becomes an Alpine ambassador and sponsor of its equal opportunities schemes. Turns out Zizou is a big Formula 1 and motorsport fan. Who knew?