Renault’s choice to finish its System 1 works engine challenge has been one of many largest tales of the 2024 season.
The transfer, solely made official final week, has triggered big controversy inside the manufacturing facility partitions at Viry-Chatillon, the place the French producer’s F1 energy items have been made because the Nineteen Seventies.
However whereas abandoning its own engine in favour of a customer Mercedes deal for the Alpine F1 team is seismic, it was fairly fascinating that the information was tucked away in a sentence in a press launch that was as a substitute targeted extra on the transformation of its engine facility right into a high-tech engineering centre.
It added to the intrigue of why issues have been altering in such a dramatic manner, with Alpine’s present management duo of staff principal Oliver Oakes and F1 advisor Flavio Briatore each being clear that the change of engine plan was instigated by administration above them.
However the first solutions have now appeared, with Renault CEO Luca de Meo providing some fascinating explanations of the motivations behind the decision in an unique interview with French newspaper L’Equipe.

Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524
Picture by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Photographs
Cash talks
Whereas Renault’s engine employees had repeatedly talked in regards to the 2026 engine challenge being on track with its efficiency figures, de Meo has mentioned that whereas the decision was “heartbreaking” it was the bottom-line monetary figures that talked in the long run.
“I’m a supervisor. I run a listed firm,” he mentioned. “I’ve to rethink the F1 challenge, to lastly win.
“So I’m searching for shortcuts to attain this. We now have turn out to be invisible. One other two years like this and the challenge would utterly deflate. We now have been on a downward slope for 3 seasons. We needed to shake all that up. With a monetary logic in thoughts.”
For de Meo, the large funding required to supply an engine – which is within the a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} – made zero sense when a less expensive buyer energy unit could possibly be slotted in that may ship simply as a lot, if no more, efficiency for lower than $20 million.
“Actual fans will not be involved by this calculation. I’m,” he mentioned.
De Meo went on to clarify that the brand new guidelines coming for 2026 – with a higher reliance on effectivity and battery energy – put issues in an ever sharper focus when it got here to prices.
He mentioned Viry, with 340 employees on F1, may don’t have any probability of competing with Mercedes, who he suggests employs 900.
He added: “They’ve take a look at benches that we do not have. The transition to the hybrid period required highly effective investments that have been underestimated on the time. We function, structurally, with three cylinders when others have eight.
“After I arrived 4 years in the past, the group needed to cease F1. If it is nonetheless there, it is as a result of I saved the factor. However we do not have the construction to be on the forefront of battery chemistry improvement, software program administration, vitality restoration.
“It isn’t simply placing an engine on the bench and saying: ‘Hey boss, I am doing 415 kW!'”

Luca de Meo, CEO, Renault Group
Picture by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Photographs
Win on Sunday, promote on Monday no extra
F1 has lengthy been a helpful advertising software for engine producers, who’ve counted on success being adopted by way of by showroom gross sales.
However de Meo suggests the hyperlinks between F1 and highway automobiles have turn out to be blurred now, as folks affiliate automotive manufacturers with various things.
Aston Martin’s success on monitor, for instance, ought to ship an uptick in its personal highway automotive gross sales. The identical is true for McLaren. De Meo is obvious that the worth of constructing your individual engine now has disappeared.
“The sponsors come for a staff, not for an engine,” he mentioned. “The companions signal with McLaren, not with Mercedes below the hood. The F1 public has modified. It has expanded to incorporate younger folks, ladies. This new clientele has a unique interpretation of this sport.
“We help a driver, a color, a model. Not an engine. Alpine, given our rating, is shedding bonuses. Sponsors are uncommon. We now have a gap. My shareholders know easy methods to depend. Alpine should generate income.”
He additionally mentioned that his dream of creating a French tremendous staff finally failed as a result of the nation did not get behind it.
“I needed to make a French staff, the French Ferrari,” he mentioned. “I put two French drivers within the seats: they crashed into one another.
“Take a tour of an A524 with me, there may be not a single French sponsor. Not one! I knocked on many doorways. In useless…”

Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524
Picture by: Erik Junius
The vultures are circling
Whereas Renault and Alpine have assured jobs for the employees who have been beforehand employed on its F1 engine challenge, de Meo accepts that not all could also be prepared to tackle completely different roles.
However he has revealed that those that need to keep on in F1 could also be effectively positioned, with rivals already having been in contact about luring them elsewhere.
De Meo added: “If there are some who’re positively pushed by the concept of creating an F1 engine, they are going to don’t have any downside repositioning themselves.
“Fred Vasseur, the boss of the Ferrari staff, known as us to ask if he may get some folks out of our firm and keep away from them having gardening depart earlier than going to work for them. OK. That is life. We’re not going to imprison our guys.”

Esteban Ocon, Alpine A524
Picture by: Alpine
The continuing sale rumours
It was recommended earlier this yr that Renault closing down its F1 engine challenge was a key step in it placing its staff up on the market.
That is one thing that has been repeatedly denied and de Meo has but once more defined why it is mindless to undergo with it.
He says that, with the worth of groups persevering with to skyrocket below F1’s increase, that there isn’t any cause to dump the operation.
“I obtain calls each 15 days from financiers, eccentrics. who need to enter F1,” he mentioned. “They know that after 2026 it is going to value far more.
“In case you are given £1 billion in the present day to take the staff, they are going to be capable of resell it for double, two years later. It is stuffed with speculators right here.
“I’ve refused 50 instances. A staff will quickly be value between $3 and 5 billion. I’m not going to promote; I’m not silly.
“Being in F1 is important for the Alpine model. We’re in a closed membership. It offers credibility to the model amongst automotive fans. We don’t want this cash.”