Renault’s choice to finish its Components 1 works engine mission has been one of many greatest tales of the 2024 season.
The transfer, solely made official final week, has triggered large controversy throughout the manufacturing facility partitions at Viry-Chatillon, the place the French producer’s F1 energy items have been made because the Nineteen Seventies.
However whereas abandoning its personal engine in favour of a buyer Mercedes deal for the Alpine F1 group is seismic, it was fairly attention-grabbing that the information was tucked away in a sentence in a press launch that was as a substitute targeted extra on the transformation of its engine facility right into a high-tech engineering centre.
It added to the intrigue of why issues had been altering in such a dramatic means, with Alpine’s present management duo of group principal Oliver Oakes and F1 advisor Flavio Briatore each being clear that the change of engine plan was instigated by administration above them.
However the first solutions have now appeared, with Renault CEO Luca de Meo providing some fascinating explanations of the motivations behind the decision in an unique interview with French newspaper L’Equipe.
Cash talks
Whereas Renault’s engine employees had repeatedly talked concerning the 2026 engine mission being on the right track with its efficiency figures, de Meo has emphasised that whereas the decision was “heartbreaking” it was the bottom-line monetary figures that talked in the long run.
Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524
Photograph by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Pictures
“I’m a supervisor. I run a listed firm,” he mentioned. “And I’ve to rethink the F1 mission, to lastly win.
“So I’m searching for shortcuts to realize this. We now have turn out to be invisible. One other two years like this and the mission would fully deflate. We now have been on a downward slope for 3 seasons. We needed to shake all that up. With a monetary logic in thoughts.”
For de Meo, the large funding required to provide an engine – which is within the a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} – made zero sense when a less expensive buyer energy unit might be slotted in that may ship simply as a lot, if no more, efficiency for lower than $20 million.
“Actual lovers will not be involved by this calculation. I’m,” he mentioned.
De Meo went on to elucidate that the brand new guidelines coming for 2026 – with a better reliance on effectivity and battery energy – put issues in an ever sharper focus when it got here to prices.
He mentioned Viry, with 340 employees on F1, may don’t have any likelihood of competing with Mercedes, who he suggests employs 900.
He added: “They’ve check benches that we do not have. The transition to the hybrid period required highly effective investments that had been underestimated on the time. We function, structurally, with three cylinders when others have eight.
“Once I arrived 4 years in the past, the group wished to cease F1. If it is nonetheless there, it is as a result of I saved the factor. However we do not have the construction to be on the forefront of battery chemistry improvement, software program administration, vitality restoration.
“It isn’t simply placing an engine on the bench and saying: ‘Hey boss, I am doing 415 kW!'”
Win on Sunday, promote on Monday no extra
Luca de Meo, CEO, Renault Group
Photograph by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Pictures
F1 has lengthy been a invaluable advertising and marketing instrument for engine producers, who’ve counted on success being adopted by means of by showroom gross sales.
However de Meo suggests the hyperlinks between F1 and highway automobiles have turn out to be blurred now, as individuals affiliate automobile manufacturers with various things.
Aston Martin’s success on observe, for instance, ought to ship an uptick in its personal highway automobile gross sales. The identical is true for McLaren. De Meo is evident that the worth of constructing your individual engine now has disappeared.
“The sponsors come for a group, not for an engine,” he mentioned. “The companions signal with McLaren, not with Mercedes underneath the hood. The F1 public has modified. It has expanded to incorporate younger individuals, girls. This new clientele has a special interpretation of this sport.
“We assist a driver, a color, a model. Not an engine. Alpine, given our rating, is dropping bonuses. Sponsors are uncommon. We now have a gap. My shareholders know how one can rely. Alpine should become profitable.”
He additionally mentioned that his dream of constructing a French tremendous group finally failed as a result of the nation didn’t get behind it.
“I wished to make a French group, the French Ferrari,” he mentioned. “I put two French drivers within the bucket seats: they crashed into one another.
“Take a tour of an A524 with me, there may be not a single French sponsor. Not one! I knocked on many doorways. In useless…”
The vultures are circling
Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524
Photograph by: Erik Junius
Whereas Renault and Alpine have assured jobs for the employees who had been beforehand employed on its F1 engine mission, de Meo accepts that not all could also be keen to tackle totally different roles.
However he has revealed that those that wish to keep on in F1 could also be nicely positioned, with rivals already having been in contact about luring them elsewhere.
De Meo added: “If there are some who’re positively pushed by the concept of constructing an F1 engine, they may don’t have any downside repositioning themselves.
“Fred Vasseur, the boss of the Ferrari group, known as us to ask if he may get some individuals out of our firm and keep away from them having gardening depart earlier than going to work for them. OK. That is life. We’re not going to imprison our guys.”
The continued sale rumours
It was steered earlier this yr that Renault closing down its F1 engine mission was a key step in it placing its group up on the market.
Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524
Photograph by: Alpine
That is one thing that has been repeatedly denied and de Meo has but once more defined why it is unnecessary to undergo with it.
He says that, with the worth of groups persevering with to skyrocket underneath F1’s increase, that there isn’t a motive to dump the operation.
“I obtain calls each 15 days from financiers, eccentrics. who wish to enter F1,” he mentioned. “They know that after 2026 it is going to price rather more.
“If you’re given £1 billion at the moment to take the group, they may be capable to resell it for double, two years later. It is stuffed with speculators right here.
“I’ve refused 50 occasions. A group will quickly be price between $3 and 5 billion. I’m not going to promote; I’m not silly.
“Being in F1 is important for the Alpine model. We’re in a closed membership. It provides credibility to the model amongst automobile lovers. We don’t want this cash.”
