Staff representatives at the Renault Group’s Viry-Chatillon Formula 1 power unit facility have urged CEO Luca de Meo to renounce plans to transform Alpine into a Mercedes customer team.
Amid Bruno Famin’s announcement last month that he would be stepping down as Alpine Team Principal – having now been succeeded by Oliver Oakes – the Frenchman confirmed Alpine was exploring transforming from a works entry into a Mercedes engine customer for 2026.
This was despite work already commencing on the 2026 Renault power unit in Viry and French union workforces having significant power over broad business decisions.
After presenting to Viry-Chatillon the opportunity to switch attention to road car technological development for the Alpine brand, a statement has been released showing staff have rejected these terms.
“The Group’s management plans to stop the 2026 programme at Viry-Chatillon and opt for an engine supply, probably from Mercedes,” began a written statement by the Social and Economic Council of Alpine employees in Viry-Chatillon (Conseil Social et Economique) sent to Motorsport.com.
“The reason given is a significant direct saving, trading development costs of $120 million for $17 million in annual supply.
“We do not understand what justifies killing this elite entity that is the Viry-Chatillon site and betraying its legend and its DNA by grafting a Mercedes heart into our F1 Alpine [car].
“The announcement of the end of the development and production of French power units for Formula 1 is incomprehensible.
“We cannot accept that Alpine and the Renault Group damage their images, which is why we ask Mr. De Meo and his board of directors to renounce this decision.”
Ever since F1 ushered in its hybrid power unit era in 2014, Renault-powered cars have been on the back foot.
However, significant work has already been carried out to turn that trend on its head with Alpine’s 2026 power unit and the written statement boasts that positive progress has been made.
“More than a hundred disruptive concepts were studied, nearly a third of which demonstrated significant performance on the test bench and should be introduced on the future Alpine engine: the AR26,” it read.
“The target was to start the first Alpine 2026 engine at the end of the first half of 2024, one and a half years after the genesis of the project.
“On 26 June 2024, the RE26A, the name given to the first ‘factory’ version of the AR26, carried out its first start-up on engine bench no. 6 at Viry-Chatillon, thus marking a success in terms of the targeted deadline.
“On this first engine, almost a third of the performance concepts, previously validated on the system bench, are still absent, planned for introduction before the end of 2024. However, the first test results are promising.
“The RE26A is seen by all the Viry-Chatillon teams as a great success, a well-born engine with a clear potential, a year and a half from the first race, to raise the ambitions of Alpine F1 team.”
According to Motorsport.com’s report, Viry has achieved 400kw power output during its first tests with the 2026 engine, closing in on the objectives set and operating at 48% thermal efficiency.
Given the work staff at Viry have reported on in such positive terms is facing being scrapped, the outrage is by no means a shock, especially given Viry’s decades-long association with producing F1 power units.
Famin’s words at Spa in July said that not only would Viry staff be redistributed to work on various Renault-group projects, such as the Alpine FIA WEC programme, the Dacia Dakar project or the Nissan Formula E squad, but the statement revealed on Friday argues that these sectors are “already saturated.”
The other carrot Famin and Renault Group management have attempted to dangle at the Viry workforce are working on expanding the Alpine road car brand.
Again, this is not satisfactory to the staff at Viry, who argue their expertise resides with F1 and is not transferable to the road car project.
“The site transformation plan, which should be definitively approved on 30 September 2024, consists of migrating resources to other projects led by Alpine Racing (Endurance, Formula E, customer competition, hydrogen combustion engine of a hypercar, etc.) already saturated with personnel, or to reclassify engineering on innovative projects, supposedly useful to the mass-produced industry, but not defined at this stage,” the statement explained.
“Innovation in the automotive sector today focuses on the chemistry and industrialisation of batteries, ‘software defined vehicles’ and autonomous driving. The skills of Viry staff are not related to these subjects.”
De Meo, Famin, Alpine Advisor Flavio Briatore and new Team Principal Oakes are now stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Amid diminishing returns in recent years, brought on by spending less than rival manufacturers on producing a power unit, Renault management wants to save cash and improve performance by taking on the stronger Mercedes engine.
But, in doing so, they must convince Viry to buy into that vision, which isn’t happening.
If Viry continues to dig in its heels, a Renault power unit could very well be on the Formula 1 grid in 2026.
