Alpine, earlier known as Renault, was once a very recognizable team in Formula One. The team has won two constructor and driver championships as a team owner. However, currently, the team is all alone. They don’t have anyone to share the engines with, as Red Bull parted ways back in 2019. Though, it has been a matter of “massive advantage” for the Alpine. The technical director of the team, Matt Harman, recently came out to reveal that Alpine is facing no distractions as the team doesn’t have any customers.
Red Bull broke their partnership with Renault/Alpine in 2019 and joined Honda, which ultimately proved to be a good decision. For the first after eight years, Red Bull finally won the constructor’s championship with Honda’s strong engines. However, even with Renault’s engine, Red Bull successfully dominated Formula One for three years, from 2010 to 2013.
But who can stop the little disputes that ultimately take place between any good partnership in the world? The same happened with Renault and Red Bull too. As the hybrid era stepped into F1, Red Bull felt Renault failed to provide compatible engines. So they had to break their partnership by the end of 2018.
Meanwhile, the technical director of Alpine, in an interview with RacingNews365, said, “There is a massive advantage [in breaking their partnership with Red Bull] There is no distraction.” Harman believes that having lived through being a works team along with the responsibility to supply engines to the other teams has always been hectic. This has always created an element of distraction. There are things that need to be compromised to make sure that the product you are servicing in order to fairly interacting with other chassis.
There Are Some Disadvantages, But Freedom Matters The Most For Alpine
According to Matt Harman, at present, Alpine has no distractions. He feels great that their conversations are all about first engineering principles. Now they only have to deal with how the team is going to design their engine. They only have to check if the engines fit organically into the car, and there are no compromises that Alpine has to do anymore.
However, he does believe that the customer teams bring something to the party. In fact, they also sometimes help them by coming up with several ideas in terms of adapting the engine to satisfy that idea. In addition, Harman believes that sometimes Alpine, the engine provider misses out on some of that information along with a bit of reliability. But in his previous experiences, he has seen that the customers don’t always run the latest equipment.
However, there is a bit of a disadvantage, too, as having no customers brings no important data samples. But, as it is human nature, freedom is worth everything, so being the technical head of Alpine, Matt Harman is enjoying the freedom of thought and the freedom of exploiting the ideas that he can implement in his scar without any hindrance or compromise.