Confesses an important personality of the paddock that, if the Alpine had had the best engine on the grid, It would not have been so far from Ferrari and McLaren throughout last season. In fact, in the Woking garage they estimate between two and three tenths of an improvement thanks to the engine change they made last winter, from Renault to Mercedes. The French engine was a drag for Alonso and Ocon in 2021, lower than the other three manufacturers, but the Viry factory has been preparing for three years a major redesign that will take to the track in 2022.
You have to go from memory: Renault made its last big push on a power unit in the winter of 2018, to present a very serious engine already in the 2019 pre-season. But the 2020 engine was actually a simple revision of the previous one with more reliability, and in 2021 none of its legacy components were modified, with an eye toward changing the rules this season. There are three campaigns with the same device, slightly altered. Now, facing the 2022 engine freeze, they will feature a completely new engine.
The improvement will be double, they count from the factory. To begin with, a more compact design that will allow the body to be narrower and reduce air resistance, which translates into performance. The A521 hump was a necessity to cool and house an oversized power unit compared to the competition. But there will also be more power available, in the powertrain and hybrid system, although it will be difficult to quantify the difference because rivals will also feature new engines in their 2022 cars.
Ocon commented on what he heard in the factory at the end of last year: “We know that we can progress in many aspects. In the chassis, we are not close to the ‘top’ teams and in the engine we are also far away. You can’t blame a single element of the car. The package, in general, is not strong enough. But we know there are improvements on the way and the people building this car won a lot of races and two titles not too many years ago. When you go to Viry or Enstone, you still breathe the spirit of 2005 and 2006. They have it in their DNA. It’s only a matter of time before that materializes.” This year, the engine should help Alonso. This is the plan.
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