Well, here we are again. It looks like yet again, Alpine is thinking about doing something incredibly stupid. Reports from reliable sources are saying that Alpine might abandon its plans to develop Formula 1 engines for 2026 and become a customer team instead.
I have been giving Alpine a lot of crap recently, but there are two very good reasons for that. 1: They are making themselves a very easy target with all their stupid decisions, and 2: as a works team, I expect them to be better. I hold them to a higher standard than a team like Haas or Williams, because Alpine should have everything in-house to become a great team. They make their own engine, they have the support of one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world behind them, and they have enough money to basically buy whatever and whoever they want.
Well, for now at least. Because if the rumors are true, that could all change very soon. Autosport, one of the most reputable and well-informed outlets in the F1 media landscape, reports that Renault is considering cutting Alpine loose and letting them buy their engines from someone else.
There are two ways of looking at this: from a performance perspective and from a reputation perspective. So let’s take both approaches for a moment.
Performance
Anyone who watched the 24 Hours of Le Mans last weekend would have been greeted by a familiar sight: both Alpine cars, in their highly anticipated first appearance at the race, blew themselves to pieces over mechanical issues. The 36 Alpine - which was driven by Mick Schumacher among others - retired with power loss due to the engine. The 35 Alpine actually had the dubious honor of being the first retirement in the race, developing an electrical failure after five hours and nearly electrocuting its driver Ferdinand Habsburg (and yes, that is an actual member of that House of Habsburg).
It’s something that F1 fans are more than familiar with. Since 2020, 75% of Alpine’s retirements has been due to mechanical issues with the majority coming from the engine department. And that’s on top of the fact that currently, the Alpine engines are the worst performing ones on the grid.
So to bring it back to that rumor of them leaving their own engines behind and buying it from a different supplier. The question becomes: is it smart from a performance point of view? And the answer is very simple. Yes. Yes it is. This would almost undoubtedly give Alpine a better and more reliable engine.
Alpine #35 stopped at Arnage: flames and smoke!
— 24 Hours of Le Mans (@24hoursoflemans) June 15, 2024
Ferdinand Habsburg is out of the car.#LeMans24 pic.twitter.com/mYd2NzypcT
Reputation
With every team, you have to ask yourself why they are in F1. Sure, part of it is just a love of motorsport. But for most of them - and especially for the works teams - it’s also a matter of prestige, reputation and marketing. If your cars do well in motorsport, then it helps build the prestige of your brand. It creates an image of reliability, of speed, of performance, of…. well, of being cool, essentially.
Does Alpine create that image right now? No, not in the slightest. Their engine has been crap for years, and the man who used to be in charge of that department (Bruno Famin) currently leads the entire Alpine F1 operation. But switching to a different engine supplier does even more reputational harm. It is a clear admission of defeat. It tells the world that not only is your engine not good enough, you also have no faith in your own operation to turn things around and make it better.
At that point, you really have to wonder why the team is still in F1. It’s insanely expensive to run a Formula 1 team. The only way to balance that out is if it translates to better sales of your road cars. Maybe that can be achieved by having better results, but that’s completely meaningless if you’re doing it with an engine of a different company. The new Renault sportscar won’t have that Ferrari or Mercedes engine in it, so why would the consumer care for that? It’s a clear disconnect between the motorsport team and the road cars, and it will actively devalue everything the team achieves from then on out.
And finally, I would like to remind you of the arguments Formula 1 gave for blocking Andretti’s entry into the sport. According to F1, Andretti wouldn’t add any real value to the sport because they weren’t bringing in a new engine manufacturer. Without a good mechanical element to it, by F1’s own analysis, there was no reason for that team to be in Formula 1.