Former Alpine Formula 1 boss Otmar Szafnauer has claimed the team’s rivals broke a “gentleman’s agreement” which would have allowed engine supplier Renault to reduce its performance disparity.
Earlier this year, an FIA analysis of the sport’s four respective power units 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 highlighted as a “notable performance gap”.
This had been mentioned previously after F1 elected to introduce an engine freeze at the end of 2021 to permit Red Bull to continue using engines supplied by Honda, who were exiting the sport, at no disadvantage, while also encouraging current manufacturers to switch attention to the new 2026 regulations.
Despite receiving support from the FIA, Alpine abandoned the proposed move to ensure parity on the engine side to focus on the updated specification of F1 power units.
However, Szafnauer has outlined that Alpine’s adversaries denied Renault the opportunity to catch up and insists the team will be hampered by the shortfall for the remaining years of the current rules cycle.
“The FIA have all the data and I think it was at my last-ever Formula 1 Commission meeting that the FIA put it on the agenda,” he explained in an interview with Peter Windsor.
“When the engine regulations were such that we had to freeze development in order for Red Bull to be able to use a Honda engine that wasn’t going to be developed, I wasn’t there for it but there was a gentleman’s agreement that said if the powertrain output of all the manufacturers was a percentage different than they would start looking at what to do to bring everybody in line.
“The FIA themselves said: ‘Look, [Renault are] outside of the powertrain difference window, we need to start talking about what we should do to bring the Renault engine back in line with the with the rest of them.’
“We had one meeting where I argued pretty hard on behalf of Renault to get the other engine manufacturers to do exactly what they promised when the engine freeze came about.
“But a gentleman’s agreement in Formula 1 is sometimes worth having and other times not.
“I think that discrepancy – only because it’s really hard to change now – will stay probably until ’26. So another two years, ’24 and ’25.”
Szafnauer, who departed Alpine in July, believes it will be “impossible” for the Anglo-French marque to become a front-runner with the limitation of its current power unit.
“We all worked as one team but the issue with the powertrain discrepancy is that it’s frozen,” he added.
“Even if you want to change it, you’ve got constraints. You can’t. You can only make changes for reliability’s sake and that doesn’t give you much latitude to improve the power output of the unit.
“And that in itself, if you have that deficiency, is hard to overcome.
“So for you to be competitive at the front of the grid, you need to have the chassis and the drivers and everything else be that much better than everyone else to make up for the powertrain deficiency – and that’s impossible.”
