It is interesting how the same news can be read in a completely different way: in recent days an interview with Luca De Meo, president of the Renault Group, appeared in the French sports newspaper the logic that led to the Alpine to repudiate the Renault power uni from 2026, to switch to the customer version of the Mercedes unit.
But this is not the subject of our curiosity, but rather the fact that Ferrari is said to be pursuing the strengthening of French technicians in the Racing Department after Loic Serra arrived from Mercedes in Maranello on 1 October as DT Chassis after a long period of gardening.
Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524
Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images
De Meo explained that the Viry Chatillon structure will not be sold, but will remain a strategic center for Renault because it will be used for other projects such as hydrogen and racing projects such as the WEC or the Dakar with Dacia: “We don’t want to fire anyone, but if there are people attracted by the idea of designing an engine for Formula 1 they will have no problem relocating. Fred Vasseur asked us if he could take some of our engineers and if we could save them the gardening period. We will not imprison our kids.”
In reality, the Parisian factory of Viry Chatillon is very redundant without F1, so it is easy to think that there could be redundancies. Ferrari, therefore, wanting to turn the tables, could call some of the engineers from the transalpine staff (and it doesn’t necessarily have to be only French…) to reinforce some Maranello departments. But by drawing employees from those who will no longer have a space, it is all too clear that there will be no gardening.
F1 is experiencing a major phase of transformation in view of the 2026 regulatory revolution and personnel movements are greatly affected by the constraints of the forced stop, so much so that the opportunity to abolish gardening is being discussed. It is clear that if there are opportunities to accelerate the transition from one brand to another, there are those who try to exploit every opportunity.
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