During the race weekend in Belgium, outgoing Alpine team boss Bruno Famen told the press that Renault was seriously considering the possibility of halting the development of its own power plants in favor of customer engines. The final decision has not yet been made, but the plans have already been communicated to employees of the engine building division at the Viri base.
As you might expect, few of Renault’s 250 employees were thrilled with what they heard. Union representative Karin Dubreck called such a decision by management a betrayal.
“We didn’t expect such news,” the French publication L’Equipe quotes Dubreck. – This is a stab in the back, a betrayal. We have developed engines that have won the Formula 1 title twelve times, and now we are told what we can’t do? They didn’t even wait for the first test drive of the new engine on the stand.”
The publication quotes another unnamed employee who works at the Viri base as saying: “We believe that the 2026 engine will be equivalent to the Mercedes engine. In the worst case, it loses 15 hp. The part related to the turbine and everything related to it, we have completely redesigned.
If we stop working now, we will never hear a Renault engine in Formula 1 again.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
