Bruno Famin says the Renault power unit situation remains the same and it can’t be offset, as Alpine is not going into F1 2024 with major expectations.
A lot has been said about the lack of horsepower of Renault power unit and pleas being made to aide it be up to the mark alongside Ferrari, Mercedes and Honda. But those requests were turned down amid the regulation freeze until the 2025 season.
Renault continues to lag slightly which affects the performance of Alpine. There’s nothing much they can do and they still lack on the recovery side. They can only play a bit with software but can’t even offset the lack by things like saving weight.
“We are lacking on the, yeah, on the recovery side, really, and we are still lacking, to be honest, because with the regulation as it is that we try to improve that because we are allowed to homologate a new software per year now, and this is something we have worked on,” said Alpine F1 team principal Famin.
“Let’s try to reduce a bit the gap, but there will be no major differences with the previous year because, as you know, the power unit is frozen. We can play a bit on the edge, but that’s all. You cannot offset it because if you can save weight, you will work on the weight distribution a bit more. If you have X kilowatts less than the others.
“You will always do better with X kilowatts more, for sure. It is what it is. But at the end of the story, we cannot, there is no need to focus on that. What we need to do is a competitive car, a competitive car is the whole, chassis, aero, tyre management, power unit, recovery, energy recovery and so on, and this is, we need to, the global integration of the car. And the global car, we need to improve,” summed up Famin.
The team has had an concept overhaul as it presented its 2024 machine last week. These changes had to be made after a learning season in 2023 where things didn’t work as much. Even with such changes, Alpine is not setting any kind of expectation on itself.
Because somewhere they don’t know where they will stand due to the overhaul. “The A524? We have learned on the aero side, on the tire usage side, tyre performance,” said Famin. “Tyre degradation. That we have learned. And we decided to go for something which looks better, and let’s see on the track if it will be better or not.
“We are not going to set any expectation in terms of results, positions. A good 2024 season will be first to see a good improvement in the way we work all together at the factory, to be able to unleash the creativity, to extract more from our talented people, all the talented people we have in Enstone and in Viry.
“If we can do that, we will be able to develop our car, which is a brand new car, we don’t know where we will be on the grid at the start of the season, because quite a lot of teams I think have the same approach in having quite a new car.
“And then that’s why it’s very difficult to set really an expectation in terms of position. It will be much more dynamic in the car development, in the way we work within the team, within the team as a whole, that will make or not a good 2024 season,” summed up Famin.
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