Why Renault is poised to end its F1 engine project and what it means for Alpine · RaceFans

When the FIA confirmed Formula 1’s new power unit regulations for 2026 two years ago, it fired the starting gun on development for the championship’s manufacturers.

For Renault, the new rules represented an opportunity to draw a line under a generation of rules it failed to master. Together with Red Bull, it swept the final championships of the V8 era, but the arrival of the V6 hybrid turbos brought that to a sudden halt.

Red Bull eventually ditched them for Honda, with whom they have enjoyed great success. Renault revived its works team, but aside from a single win in Hungary three years ago, has enjoyed little success since.

Alpine team principal Bruno Famin lobbied unsuccessfully for the manufacturer to receive a break from the freeze on power unit development introduced two years ago, in order to reduce its disadvantage to rival designs. Having lost that argument, attention focused on their plans for 2026.

Famin is full of praise for the work Renault has done preparing for 2026 at its Viry-Chatillon engine division. “The guys in Viry are making an amazing job,” he said.

“We all know that since 2014, we don’t have the best engine in Viry, but it’s one of the engines which improved the most since 2014. And now, we’re still not exactly at the top, but the improvement has been very good.

“The job which is being done in Viry to prepare the 2026 engine is incredible. We fixed a very high target and I am confident that we can reach that target. The figures we have from the dyno are very good.”

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Despite this, the manufacturer is poised to end its in-house F1 engine development and revert to customer team status for 2026.

On the face of it, this is an incomprehensible decision. Everyone remembers the scale of the advantage Mercedes enjoyed when the current engine rules were introduced because they designed their own power unit as well as their own chassis. Why would any manufacturer surrender an advantage which has the potential to make them F1’s next dominant force?

Famin’s explanation is that Alpine wish to redeploy Viry-Chatillon’s staff to work on other projects relating to its expanding line-up of road cars. He made it explicitly clear that the change in strategy will not lead to any redundancies.

“We have presented a project,” he explained. “The project is not the power unit, the project is much bigger than that. It’s a transformation project at the level of the Alpine brand.

“The Alpine brand is developing, has a huge, huge project of development, with seven new models in the coming years with high-end technology. It’s very, very ambitious to build this new sporting brand and to make it known outside of France, everywhere in the world.

“The project which has been presented at the beginning of the week to the staff representative in Viry-Chatillon is to reallocate the resources from one side to another, one side being the development of the Formula 1 power unit, which is being made in Viry, to dedicate those resources and skills to developing new technologies for the brand, for the new products of the brand.”

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Alpine’s F1 team will therefore have to go to a rival to get a power unit. “One of the consequences of this project, if it’s accepted, would be then for Alpine F1 team to buy a power unit instead of developing its own power unit. Then we’ll have more resources to develop the brand and a different power unit to race for the Formula 1 team.”

Carlos Ghosn, Renault, 2016 — Renault returned to F1 as a full manufacturer in 2016

In short, Alpine believes its resources will be put to better use if Viry develops hardware for its road cars and it leaves the huge cost of F1 engine development to someone else.

“We are at a very specific crossroads where the project for developing the Alpine brand is now very concrete, very clear,” said Famin. “We know the resources needed for developing it.

“On the other hand, we know that for the 2026 car generation in Formula 1, now that the chassis regulations have been published a few weeks ago, it’s now that we have to decide. The guy designing the chassis needs to know with which PU they are going to use.

“It’s not why before, it’s because now the question at the Alpine brand point of view is how do we use in the best possible way for developing the brand the resources we have?”

But what about the lost potential of developing their own F1 engine? Famin concedes there is potential to gain an advantage over their rivals this way, but he believes this is much less than in past seasons – a case arguably strengthened by McLaren beating Mercedes with their own engines this year.

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“There is a bit of potential in developing the integration, but it’s quite theoretical at the end of the story, because now all the PU manufacturers are working very closely, very early in the project with the teams, and all the integrations are incredibly optimised,” he said.

“If we take a Ferrari or Mercedes engine, I’m quite convinced that all the integration, all the packaging will be already very, very good.”

The final decision will be taken within a matter of weeks as Alpine pays full respect to, among other things, “strict” French labour laws. “The process will take some weeks and it will be quite fast,” Famin predicted. “We are following all the mandatory steps and there is no reason not to make it properly.

“A very important thing in the project which has been presented: every single employee will be offered a job. There is no redundancy at all.”

Alpine is “doing everything to make… a very difficult moment as painless as possible,” Famin stressed. “But we know it’s never easy, this kind of thing.”

With Alpine also confirming Famin will be replaced as team principal at the end of the month, questions have been raised over the future of the team. However he insists Alpine will continue in F1.

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“The Formula 1 project remains a key project for the Alpine brand,” he said. “It’s thanks to Formula 1 that we want to develop the brand awareness globally.

“That remains, but the project is just reallocating the resources to develop the brand better always based on the pillar of motorsport and mainly Formula 1 to develop the awareness.”