Famin: Alpine Refuses to Part with Power Unit Secrets to Cadillac

Nov.13 - Bruno Famin, still in charge of Alpine's overall motorsport activities, has denied the Renault Group might sell the intellectual property of the axed 2026 engine.

In a short media statement, Alpine has confirmed that it will use customer Mercedes engines and gearboxes for the start of the new regulations era until "at least 2030".

Famin, no longer team boss of the Formula 1 team, said Renault CEO Luca de Meo made the decision to end the engine program because the gap between works development costs and simply buying power units was too wide.

"Until 2025 inclusive, the engine cap $95 million, then it will be $135m from 2026," he told Auto Hebdo. "That is much too high. We would have to develop at full speed over a 4-5 year cycle, representing about a billion dollars of investment.

"Spending half as much money as our competitors while thinking we are twice as intelligent no longer exists. On the other hand, the regulations limit leasing engines to $17m per year. That's a huge difference, especially when we only talk about engines when things are going badly."

Famin said that if the customer engine price was higher than the capped $17m, it may have made sense for Renault to continue to make power units so they could be sold.

"There were many of us around the table who wanted this increase, but not all of us, otherwise we would have achieved it. It simply went from $15 to $17 million, which is not enough."

Recently, there were rumours that Renault might decide to sell the intellectual property of its stalled 2026 engine program to GM-Cadillac.

Famin insists: "No, we will not sell our IP because Viry's know-how is its capital. We want to keep our value for our future project. We are not parting with it.

"Also, we are not going to help competitors to beat us - that makes no sense. So no - it is totally out of the question to sell this intellectual property."

Similarly, he also denied Alpine will use its new customer Mercedes engines from 2026 whilst allowing another entity - like Cadillac - to take over the operations at Viry-Chatillon.

"That is totally out of the question," he repeated.

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