“There is no distraction,” Alpine technical director on the ‘massive advantage’ coming from no longer supplying engines to McLaren and Red Bull

Renault (now known as Alpine in F1) are the second most-successful F1 engine manufacturer of all time. Their customer teams (and they themselves) have won 12 constructors’ titles with a Renault engine in the car. Half of those were won by Williams (1992-1997), two by their own works team (2005, 2006), and the rest by Red Bull between 2010 and 2013. But now, they do not supply engines to any other team.

For what was such a successful collaboration, their partnership with Red Bull broke down rather quickly. They did not nail the 2014 regulations, but in the words of Adrian Newey, when the engine seemed to worsen in 2015, it proved to be the final nail in the coffin. Red Bull continued to use TAG-Heuer badged Renault engines until the 2018 season, after which they switched to Honda power. They also supplied Toro Rosso, RB’s sister team in 2014 and 2015.

Between 2018-2020, they supplied engines to McLaren. This partnership ended in 2021, with the team returning to Mercedes power (which they had used from 1995-2014). While this means there’s going to be less commercial revenue coming into the team, Alpine (Renault)’s technical director, Matt Harman, believes it’s a ‘massive advantage’. He said in conversation with RacingNews365.com: “I think there is a massive advantage, and there is no distraction,”

According to Harman, the advantage comes from the fact that they don’t have to make sure their engine is suitable for their customer teams’ needs now: “Having lived through being a works team and supplying others working on the engine side where we would have supplied others, there is always an element of distraction and things you always have to compromise to make sure your product can fairly interact with other chassis.”

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Alpine technical director: No customer teams means no compromises

Of course, for the collaboration to continue, the supplier team will have to make sure the customer team is happy. An example of this (from the same earlier cited interview) was given by Adrian Newey when he said that Renault did not have the most powerful engine (between 2010-2013), but ‘bent over backwards’ for it to fit Red Bull’s needs. Now, there’s no need for all that – they only have to worry about their own works team.

According to Matt Harman, there are no conversations about compromising [to make sure the engine suits the customer team as well] now: “With us, we don’t have any of that. It’s quite good that our conversations are all about first principles engineering, about how we’re going to design and architect the engine, how it fits into a car organically – we don’t have any conversations about any compromises.”

2023 will be their third season after the rebrand to ‘Alpine’, and there’ll be an all-French lineup to boot. They definitely took a step up with the advent of the new regulations, and while joining the top three in the title fight is highly unlikely, they can still hope to compete for podiums. Of which there were none, as only one driver outside the top three teams stood on the podium – Lando Norris (McLaren) in Imola. Alpine will definitely hope for more podium finishes in the upcoming season.

In case you missed it:

• “They are heavy, it has less grip,” Esteban Ocon believes F1 cars have regressed in the ‘fun’ aspect after regulation changes
• “There will be no hierarchy to start the season,” Alpine CEO confirms that Pierre Gasly nor Esteban Ocon will get No.1 driver status

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