Lack of horsepower at Alpine: Wolff tells what F1 should and should not do

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Wolff warns on Alpine horsepower deficit
31 July 2023 at 16:23
Last update 31 July 2023 at 16:26
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  • Sam Godber

Of the four engine suppliers in Formula 1, Renault currently has by far the least powerful powerplant. Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly would be running in the Alpine with some 30bhp less power than the 18 other drivers and that has not been the intention of the engine freeze. There is talk of a solution to this, but Toto Wolff is setting some conditions.

From 2022, engine development in Formula 1 has been frozen. No more improvements are allowed that provide extra performance from the power sources. But: updates related to improving reliability are allowed. This creates a bit of a tricky area of tension, because the less likely an engine breaks down, the more aggressively teams can tune their power units.

So the performance of the engines has not remained the same over the past year and a half either, and Renault in particular seems to be falling a bit behind. The difference with the power units of Mercedes, Red Bull/Honda and Ferrari would now be around 30bhp. Renault and Alpine want to do something about that and so the topic was discussed at the F1 Commission meeting at Spa-Francorchamps last weekend.

Wolff has clear opinion

Indeed, when the engine freeze was established, it was agreed that should such a situation arise in the future, at the very least a possible solution should be discussed. That has now happened, but Toto Wolff is fairly sceptical. The Mercedes team boss is not necessarily against roughly equal engines, but he does warn against introducing a so-called Balance of Performance (BoP), as we do see in the WEC.

According to Wolff, such a measure could mean the "bankruptcy" of Formula 1. "Once we have a general understanding of what the missing performance is [from the Renault engine], we have to discuss how much more dyno hours and jokers we can give. That is something we need to discuss. But to do anything about the supply of fuel or BoP is a disaster and a declaration of bankruptcy for Formula 1. We should not even talk about it," he is clear to Sport1 and others.