WEC: Alpine is not concerned about the reliability of Mecachrome engines

Alpine Endurance Team, Renault’s works team, is preparing for its debut in the Hypercar category of the World Endurance Championship, and the latest A424 sports prototypes are powered by engines from French company Mecachrome.

Officially, hybrid power plants are called Alpine, but they are based on 6-cylinder Mecachrome V634 3.4-liter turbo engines, known from the F3 and F2 youth series. And the reputation of these engines is not the best: they are not distinguished by high reliability, although “long races” require precisely this quality.

But Nicolas Lapierre, Alpine Endurance driver and teammate of Mick Schumacher in the number 36 crew, is not worried about that, as the tuning of the engines for the WEC was carried out by Renault mechanics, who have enormous experience in the years in Formula 1.

“A lot of work has gone into adapting this bike for endurance racing,” explains Lapierre. – The structure remains the same, but everything inside has been renewed. One of Alpine’s strengths is that we have a large fleet of test benches at our engine base in Viry-Châtillon, and I can assure you that our engines have undergone extensive testing on these benches.

In addition, during the tests we performed a simulated race and were able to work on the track for up to 30 hours in a row, so everything is fine with the engines. Of course, everyone understands that the Le Mans Marathon places special demands on technology, there is a different circuit there and this race takes place under different conditions, but so far the engines have proven themselves well.

Alpine is one of the few teams that competes in both the WEC and Formula 1, so naturally we try to achieve synergies, especially in the work on the power unit, the hybrid system and the combustion engine. Viri’s mechanics also put a lot of energy into our hypercar. We try to actively apply the knowledge and experience that Alpine Racing has gained in Formula 1, so that our project progresses as quickly as possible.

However, we must be moderate in our expectations. Of course, it won’t be easy for us in the first year, because our team worked mostly alone during the tests, so it’s still difficult to judge our pace. Of course we want to become competitive in the medium term, we want to fight for victories, but in the first year it will be difficult.”

The A424 hypercar will be officially unveiled this week as part of the presentation of Alpine’s new Formula 1 car, which will take place on February 7 at the Alpine F1 team’s base in Enstone. And his racing debut will take place in Qatar at the beginning of March – the new WEC season will start in less than a month.