Ferrari on the hunt for Renault F1 engineers
Ferrari can continue its… Spending in France. After the new technical director Loic Serrawho arrived from Mercedes and began working at Maranello this week once his long stint ended gardening leave, Frederic Vasseur seems intent on signing more of his compatriots to strengthen the organization chart of the Cavallino engineers. The backstory was revealed Luca De Meothe CEO of the Renault group who recently explained in an interview with the sports newspaper The Team the reasons why Alpine decided to no longer produce the power unit in-house and to move (from 2026) to the status of a simple Mercedes customer team.
Vasseur and De Meo’s background
A farewell which will evidently also produce effects from a market perspective: while guaranteeing that there will be no layoffs and that all the engineers working in the Viry-Chatillon factory (where the Renault engine is designed and built) will be reassigned to other programmes, De Meo himself admitted that some might want to join the competition. And he mentioned the Ferrari team principal among those who asked Renault-Alpine for information also regarding a possible reduction or complete cut of the leave period of gardening.
“We guaranteed – De Meo said – that there will be no job losses, but if there are people attracted by the idea of designing an engine for Formula 1 they will have no problem moving elsewhere. Fred Vasseur, boss of Scuderia Ferrari, called us to ask us if he could hire some of our technicians and if we could save them the gardening leave period. Okay, that’s how life goes. We will not imprison our kids”. Vasseur was Renault’s team principal in the 2016 season (well before De Meo, who has been in charge since 2020, arrived at the helm of the group) and may therefore know well some of the engineers who developed the power unit for Alpine.
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