General
'Alpine has reliability issues with 2022 engine'
- GPblog.com
Alain Prost has left Alpine with a bad taste in his mouth. The four-time world champion's presence as an advisor to the French formation was no longer appreciated and so Prost left. In doing so, he also gives a hint about the state of affairs regarding the 2022 engine.
New engine concept for Alpine
Alpine are coming up with a completely new engine with a new design in 2022. Renault Sport is said to have been working on this for two years, so you would expect a significant step (despite an engine freeze) compared to last season. For now, however, less seems true.
Indeed, Prost reveals in an interview with L'Equipe that the Renault engine is suffering from reliability problems. "One has on the engine a little topic of reliability." he said. During simulations on the test bench, the fifth placed team in the constructors' world championship found out that the power unit is not yet performing at the desired level.
Renault and reliability
Renault and reliability are two concepts that are inextricably linked. Reliability problems also caused an end to the cooperation with the surely important customer Red Bull Racing at the end of 2018. In the years that followed, the power unit did become more reliable, but it still fell short of engine power compared to Honda and Mercedes.
Renault currently only supplies engines to its own sports division Alpine. This seems to put the French at a disadvantage, as they have to develop their engine with only one team. Engine suppliers such as Ferrari (three teams) and Mercedes (four teams) can also call on customer teams for testing.