After months of speculation, the Renault Group announced earlier this week that it would stop the production and supply of Formula 1 engines at its Viry-Chatillon factory in France after the 2025 season. This decision has raised several eyebrows in the F1 community as Renault has such a long and rich history in the sport dating back to 1977.
The Renault Formula 1 team, which was rebranded as Alpine at the start of 2021, has been in a state of steady decline in the past couple of seasons. Experts believe that Alpine has blamed the Renault engine it uses for its poor performance.
However, unlike experts, the engineers at Alpine seem to be disappointed with Renault’s decision to abandon the development of their own V6 engine in favor of potentially using a customer engine from Mercedes. As per recent reports, one of the engineers told “The Source” that it’s not the Viry factory or the engine alone that has been the cause of trouble for the team.
“[The engine] has a deficit that only contributes 15% to the overall performance, and we’re unable to continue our development which had been bearing fruit since 2022. The rest is, in fact, partly justified by the poor performance of the gearbox, which falls under Enstone’s responsibility,” the engineer (dubbed as Louis for anonymity) said as quoted by Eurosport.
In fact, the disappointment of Alpine employees was evident through their protest, which took place during the Italian Grand Prix weekend, against the planned closure of the team’s powertrains department.
A first look at the peaceful protest some of Renault’s Viry-Chatillon-based F1 staff are partaking in at Monza pic.twitter.com/IZFqjSiJu4
— Autosport (@autosport) August 30, 2024
Those working within the Alpine garage at Monza showed unity by wearing black bands around their arms. The message of the protest was basically around a rejection of Renault’s lack of dialogue regarding their decision.
Alpine employees see this as a waste of their potential
Renault has struggled to produce competitive engines since the start of the turbo-hybrid era in 2014, which has eventually led to a reassessment of its F1 program. The management believes that resources currently allocated to the F1 engine program could be better utilized in other motorsport projects within the Renault-Alpine Group.
However, those working on the program have argued differently. They believe that the advancements made in the development of the 2026 engines, which are designed under new regulations that require a nearly 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power, could have positioned Alpine for success in the future.
