As expected, Alpine’s plan to abandon Renault Power Units starting in 2026 was not well received by employees at the Viry-Chatillon site, who made their voices heard, asking the French manufacturer to review its plans.
As confirmed by Bruno Famin on the eve of the Belgian Grand Prix, a key figure in Alpine and Team Principal until a few weeks ago, the plan already in place would be to give up the Renault PUs to become a customer of a rival manufacturer, which in this case would be Mercedes. According to Renault employees, this choice would represent a sort of “betrayal” towards Renault and its technicians, also because the work behind the scenes for the preparation of the 2026 Power Unit has already begun.
The choice would have several reasons behind it, starting from the economic plan, given that producing a Power Unit in-house, among other things only for a team, represents a significant investment, also keeping in mind that for the constructor there are no financial rewards as there are for the teams. Even though from 2026 a spending limit will also arrive for the engine manufacturers, it is clear that it will still be an expense of a certain size that, at this moment, does not seem to give the hoped-for return.
Alpine A523, technical detail
Photo by: George Piola
Final decision by end of September
The final decision on the engine plan and the future of the Viry site, where the Power Units are developed and produced, is expected on September 30, also because French law is quite clear when it comes to securing the jobs of employees. Famin explained that no technicians will be fired, but rather they will be relocated through a plan hypothesized by Renault to transfer the attention of the French factory’s F1 staff to the development of new technologies.
Renault’s current engine staff have already expressed their disappointment behind the scenes with Renault executives and CEO Luca de Meo over the decision to abandon the Power Unit project, but they have now made their concerns public. A statement from the Social and Economic Council of Alpine employees in Viry-Chatillon (Conseil Social et Economique), sent to Motorsport.com, stressed that it would make more than sense to continue the 2026 engine project within the Renault group.
“The Group’s management intends to stop the 2026 program at Viry-Chatillon and opt for an engine supply, probably from Mercedes. The reason given is a significant saving, exchanging the development costs of 120 million dollars for 17 million dollars of annual supply”, the note reads, underlining what Famin argued a few weeks ago, when he explained how the supply costs are significantly lower than the production costs, given that the FIA has in any case imposed a maximum expense for the resale of the Power Units, set at 17 million.
“We do not understand what justifies the choice to abandon this elite headquarters that is the Viry-Chatillon site and the betrayal of its legend and its DNA by grafting a Mercedes heart into ours. [vettura] F1 Alpine. The announcement of the end of the development and production of French engines for Formula 1 is incomprehensible”.
The Viry site where Renault PUs are born
“We cannot accept that Alpine and the Renault Group damage their image, which is why we ask Mr. De Meo and his Board of Directors to abandon this decision.”
The status of the work on PU 2026
Of course, it is difficult to have direct references on the work compared to that of other manufacturers, but in the letter, the Social and Economic Council wanted to underline how Viry has achieved development objectives with the new engine, in line with those set. Even if there cannot be a direct comparison, the employees believe that the PU that is running on the bench has reached a good potential during the tests.
“More than one hundred concepts were studied, almost a third of which demonstrated significant performance on the test bench and are expected to be introduced in Alpine’s next engine: the AR26,” the document reads.
“The objective was to start the first Alpine 2026 engine at the end of the first half of 2024, a year and a half after the genesis of the project. On 26 June 2024, the RE26A, the name given to the first version of the AR26, made its first start-up on engine bench no. 6 in Viry-Chatillon, respecting the deadline set”, continues the note, which suggests that the main objective was first to have a reliable base, with several manufacturers having started the engine on the bench already several months ago, and then to focus on adding concepts useful for improving performance.
Alpine A524 Rear Wing and Technical Details
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“This first engine still lacks nearly a third of the performance concepts previously validated on the system bench, scheduled for introduction by the end of 2024. However, the first test results are promising.”
The letter states that the test engine exceeded 400kW of power during its first hours of operation, coming close to the performance target set for the first race in 2026. The engine is said to have a thermal efficiency of 48% and had not had any major reliability issues. However, other interesting details were also revealed in the document, such as the fact that the new engine will be around 12% shorter than the current one, which would allow more space for more effective integration into the chassis. The unit tested was also below the minimum weight set by the regulations, although it is clearly still an early version, which could have seen further tweaks in the coming months as engineers looked at performance.
“The RE26A is seen by all the teams at Viry-Chatillon as a great success, a well-born engine with clear potential, a year and a half after the first race, to raise the ambitions of the Alpine F1 Team.”
Although Renault has promised to move the current Viry F1 engine staff to new projects, which could include hydrogen technology, the Board found this to be pointless. “The site transformation plan, which should be definitively approved on 30 September 2024, consists of either migrating resources to other projects led by Alpine Racing (Endurance, Formula E, customer racing, hydrogen combustion engine of a hypercar, etc.) already saturated with staff, or reclassifying them to innovative projects, presumably useful to the series industry, but not defined at this stage,” the statement reads.
“Automotive innovation today focuses on battery chemistry and industrialization, software-defined vehicles, and autonomous driving. The skills of Viry’s staff are not tied to these topics.”
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