Alpine admit Renault ‘ran out of time’ to close F1 engine deficit

Alpine Technical Director Matt Harman admits that Renault “ran out of time” to close the deficit to other power unit manufacturers prior to an engine freeze being implemented at the start of 2022.

Renault opted to prioritise the pursuit of outright performance with last year’s engine before its specification was suspended in the knowledge that it could still make reliability enhancements at the FIA’s consent.

However, an FIA analysis of the respective power units earlier this year discovered that the Renault engine lagged an estimated 20-33hp behind Ferrari, Honda and Mercedes.

That prompted a discussion over the topic of an equalisation programme being introduced to enable Renault to overcome what the FIA regarded as a “notable performance gap”.

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But Alpine decided to abandon the proposed move to ensure parity on the engine front and instead relocate resources towards the new regulations scheduled to arrive in 2026.

Harman, who was promoted to his current role ahead of the 2022 season, has denied that the team’s deficit on the powertrain side is tough for the chassis operation in Enstone.

“I wouldn’t say frustrating,” he told Autosport. “I think we tried. I think it’s important that we try these things. In the end, we have the technology and the capability to put the power unit where we’d like it to be, we just ran out of time on the RE22.

“We were very courageous with that engine. Okay, it’s a little bit behind where we’d like it to be. But it used to be a long way behind, and we made a big step, but we just didn’t quite get there enough.

“And we just couldn’t take any more risks than we did, it would have been nice to have it unlocked for a little while just to do that again.

“But in the end, I think it’s also important to note that we’ve got another power unit to do at the moment. That’s a big focus for the team. And that’s where we see our future.

“So I think we took a decision in the end, actually, to just focus on the future. And we’ll deal with this power unit for the next two years by trying to remove some of its parasitic losses and do everything that we can do inside the regulations.”

Alpine endured a disastrous weekend at the high-speed Monza circuit with both cars exiting in the first stage of qualifying and failing to threaten the points positions.

Harman accepts that the Anglo-French marque’s struggles at similar venues on the calendar demonstrated its shortfalls can not only be attributed to the engine division.

“You’ve all seen the numbers, we’ve stated the delta that we have,” he added. “It’s not just about the power unit deficit. If we look at Monza, and we look at how we performed there, it was not a good weekend for us.

“We didn’t expect to be there. We knew the performance delta for the power unit before we went in, but we didn’t expect to be in that position.

“And that tells you something that we just didn’t do enough on the chassis side to complement the power unit and make the best of it. And that’s something we actually learned for Las Vegas.”

He added: “We do have to make some compromises, of course, you have to re-optimise your car into a different zone. I think there’s a lot you can do. And I don’t think we did enough at some of the circuits where the power unit dominates.”