🇸🇬 F1'24: R18 - Powertrain Zig Zag

The 2026 F1 season is going to be a real test for the sport and how durable its fanbase truly is. Through the Drive to Survive era, fans have congregated to watch a stylised version of the sport they might already love, while others see something with fast cars and drama without Vin Diesel in it (or with Vin Diesel in it if they’re in Miami), and through that lens, they’ve seen people like Daniel Ricciardo rise, fall, rise, fall and fall again. These fans have lived through the LolMaxWins era and will, a couple of weeks before the 2025 season, see the Lando and McLaren surge through a dramatic montage and the usual talking heads saying some obvious things to bridge the gap as a narrator.

2025 is the prelude to The Big Change.

The cars will be a bit smaller, a bit lighter, maybe they’ll be shinier, and the people driving them won’t be certain at all of just how much power they have, but one thing we already know is that Formula 1 is bringing car manufacturers back. Names once part of the sport who disappeared are flocking back with collaborations and technical partnerships and anything that will get them through the door of the room that prints money.

Ford are coming back with Red Bull, marking a full circle moment for the American giants, who were previously with Stewart, which - via Jaguar - became Red Bull. (Also consider this a personal plea to bring back the Cosworth name).

Audi, having seen what German rivals Mercedes have done in F1, are taking over the Sauber name and its 32 sponsors. Toyota would like you to know that they’re not coming back in the traditional sense to Formula 1, but have a technical partnership with Haas. Some springs and data might be exchanged, it’s difficult to know what it means, but it’s a massive positive for Haas and the sport to have endurance racing royalty involved somehow.

Honda move over to give the Aston Martin its new power, which will be fun for Fernando Alonso, Ferrari will be red, while Mercedes will be supplying McLaren, Williams, themselves and probably Alpine.

While all these car marques are getting the badge in, engine manufacturer Renault is doing the opposite. Staff at their powertrain plant south of Paris have been making their voices heard, but it won’t change Renault’s decision to leave the sport.

It will be a shame to lose the name, the sky blue Renault driven by Fernando Alonso for his two World Championships being one of those names that fit F1 perfectly, but in recent years, the engine has been seen as underperforming - especially compared to its peers. They have lagged behind, unable to develop the engine significantly, and have slumped to ninth place in 2024, had a revolving door of senior staff, brought back Flavio Briatore, have a driver lineup that hates each other and the constant stalking horse of people once associated with the team saying “hmm, maybe they’re for sale” (the team say they’re not).

2025 must be better for them. A driver lineup of Pierre Gasly and exciting rookie Jack Doohan, an engine team determined to have a solid swansong for the flashily-named Renault E-Tech RE25 1.6 V6 t. There’s leadership in place now with Hitech’s Oliver Oakes and a raft of celebrity owners from that bloke that owns Wrexham FC to that former boxing champion to the guy that dates Taylor Swift and plays a bit of football on Sundays.

Because let’s face it, 2024 has been a stinker. They didn’t score a point until Miami, and the past three races have seen six zero point finishes, with Gasly and Esteban Ocon accumulating 13 points with the latter being under the Bearmandoza line (I wrote about that last time).

But that direction is taking a different turn with the powertrain manufacturer. Buying an engine in is a lot cheaper, but the money you save from buying it in from a company with an obvious track record of success comes with its own set of considerable costs.

Let’s start with the human side of it. Alpine have said that everyone who wants to retain their job at Viry-Châtillon can keep it, and they might be transferred to an “F1 Monitoring Unit” or the Alpine Hypercar or something else. Either way, you know how that goes. They’ve tried to do the right thing, by telling staff who want to leave for another F1 team that they won’t have to go through a period of gardening leave.

So not only do Renault lose the institutional knowledge of staff who have been there for years, that knowledge also goes to rival teams, potentially in the same season. How do Renault make their 2025 engine as good as it can be if they’re all working for other teams?

And the other thing to lump into the costs column is no longer being a Works team. Instead of making your own powertrain to fit whatever the dimensions of your precisely-engineered machine is. You can mould it, shape it, take a few corners off it and make it do what you want. You buy something off the shelf, you’re working the other way around. You have to make that unit fit your shell - and there’s a cautionary tale in McLaren and their ill-fated relationship with Honda.

You lose that bespoke unit, and now you’re likely to be just another Mercedes customer. Got a problem for your $9m-ish investment, file a ticket and get in line. Your call is very important to us, and we’re currently experiencing higher than usual call volumes. As a sidenote, any company that says that should be forced to publish their call volumes. But I digress, this isn’t Watchdog.

Being part of a works team is a huge draw for a driver. There’s nothing wrong with bringing in parts off the shelf, every team does. But the powertrain is so crucial that drivers will normally - once they get a choice in their career - choose to go places that make their own engines, believing that they can be the missing piece in an almost complete package.

And what does it say about France as a force in F1? The nation that brought us Alain Prost’s three titles, Olivier Panis’ amazing win in a Monaco destruction derby, that weird hairpin in Magny-Cours and the circuit that looks like a 3D eye test in Paul Ricard. No longer with a circuit, a couple of struggling drivers and team diminished by no longer being a Works team. The French influence is fading further in F1, and losing the Renault name will be a huge part of that.

The Renault name has just 30 races left, starting this Sunday in Austin. Esteban Ocon’s famous win in Hungary 2021 will probably be the only win this team has. An incredible highlight and one that everyone in that team will remember. 30 races left to leave a legacy will be a difficult task, but stranger things have happened.