If the struggles at Alpine continue, then it could lead to parent company Renault to pull the plug on the whole operation. The issues at Alpine are legion, but the most concerning among them are the mechanical ones.
In the previous part of this series, I showed that there is a rotten culture within the upper management at Alpine. There is the expectation of immediate results without really wanting to put in the effort to actually achieve that. But problematic managers can only do so much damage. If the car is fast and the drivers are good, you can work your way around managerial problems.
Well, in the case of Alpine, they do have the fast drivers. Ocon and Gasly are both race winners and have both achieved podiums in 2023. But the car… well, it isn’t great.
Unreliability has plagued Alpine for years
The cars of the French team have always been very French. By which I mean they break down constantly. In 2022, seven out of the eight DNF’s were because of mechanical issues. In 2023, that was somewhat better with five out of ten, but that’s still the same amount of mechanical issues as Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren combined. In 2021, it was four out of five DNF’s due to mechanical issues, in 2020 it was five out of five. And even before that, it was a well-known fact that the Renault engine was a timebomb. Red Bull’s struggles with that engine were the primary reason that they switched to Honda engines shortly before dethroning Mercedes as the dominant team in F1.
2024 doesn’t appear to be any better for Alpine in the mechanical department. In just the second race of the season, Gasly had to park the car in the pitbox because his gearbox failed him. The man couldn’t even complete a single lap in the race before the car failed him.
It’s a big problem when the engine fails them, because the engines are made by Renault themselves. In fact, current team boss Bruno Famin used to be in charge of the engine department at Renault. He is the one who helped create the engine and thereby the car as it is right now. And especially in the engine department, some big changes need to be made.
Renault engines are the slowest
There is something looming on the horizon: the new engine regulations of 2026. For many engine providers it’s a ray of light in the darkness to promise them that they may finally be able to overtake Red Bull. For Alpine, it’s looking much more like a nightmare.
As I said, Renault makes their own engines and exclusively provides those to Alpine. That sounds good in theory, but in practice, it’s a little disappointing. The FIA estimated last year that the Renault engines produce about 30 horsepower less than their competitors Mercedes, Ferrari and Honda. F1 currently has an engine freeze in place, which means that you can’t develop the current generation of engines because the next one is coming in soon. That means that Alpine is currently stuck with a slower engine, not just for this year but also for 2025. For Alpine and Renault, this next engine has to be a slam dunk, otherwise they’ll be once again stuck with a worse engine in a slower car.
Renault is desperately hoping for that new engine to be the golden ticket they’ve wanted for years now. But simultaneously, that engine could also be their ticket out of F1. They’re already committed to developing it, there’s no turning that back now. However, they can decide to drop the team and instead focus on only providing the engines. Running a team is expensive, but selling engines is a lot cheaper. Therefore, Renault is putting all their eggs in this one basket. Team principal Bruno Famin has talked repeatedly about how confident they are in their new engine and in the new regulations. When Red Bull was pleading for the regulations to be altered to allow more wiggle room for the chassis under the current regulations, Alpine strongly argued against it. They desperately want the rules for the new engines to remain as they currently are. Renault even had a preliminary deal already with Andretti to provide them with engines once the Americans joined the grid, though obviously that deal fell through.
Renault might be better off leaving F1
It’s clear that Alpine has a mountain to climb. If they don’t get an absolutely amazing engine in 2026, they essentially lose their reason for existing as a works team. The car currently is slow and unreliable. The drivers are good, but they can only do so much. The organization at the top is a rudderless ship. If things continue down this road, it becomes increasingly appealing to Renault to just sell it all. After all, they are not in F1 for the love of the game. Alpine is basically a marketing vessel for them, an investment of sorts. And as is the case with any investment, they’ll eventually want to see a return on it, either by winning championships or driving up sales of their road cars. But with the team at best driving in the midfield and at worst stuck in the back, they’re achieving neither. So it only becomes a matter of time before Renault is better off selling it all.
Selling to who? Well, it just so happens that there’s an American team waiting in the wings who are very eager to join F1 and who might be willing to use Renault engines until their own supplier comes in in 2028…