Alpine is not ruling out seeking partner teams “down the road” but for now, the priority is solely on the works outfit.
2021 will be the first time since 2006 that the rebranded Renault team will be the only one using the French manufacturer’s engine, this after McLaren switched back to Mercedes for this season.
While that might not look great for Renault, who also lost both Red Bull teams to Honda in recent years, recently installed Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi isn’t too concerned.
“You have to understand that because of the sheer nature of the business, you need the [factory] F1 team as central to the business you have today,” he said via Motorsport Week.
Also Read:
- Alpine welcome ‘demanding’ Alonso but he will not have No.1 status
- ‘One or two wins’ the goal for Alpine in 2022, says Renault CEO
- Mercedes confirm Ocon is a potential option for 2022 seat
“So I think a partner team would be nice to have but not a must-have because we’re building on the current F1 team, we need full autonomy, full independence, full dedication to the F1 team and itself, and leveraging it.
“[To be] able to reap the fruit for the business building a partner team could be a nice to have down the road but it’s not something we’re actively seeking at the moment.”
That decision though does come with its pros and cons, as Rossi explained…
“The pros are that we can dedicate all our efforts on designing our own engine and fitting it into our own car, which is a big pro because you’re not distracted by other activities and you can really leverage the fact that you are a manufacturer,” he said.
“The cons could be the fact that you might lose a little bit of the core developments that you could get by having two or several teams in parallel.
“But frankly, it could be outweighed very quickly should you have any problems.
“Another con could be that you are designated to provide the benefit to another team,” he added, referring to how Alpine would be required by the regulations to supply engines if a team was without a power unit.
“If you have not been prepared for that, you will need to increase the workforce consistently so I’m not sure it’s a very desirable effect.
“But at the end of the day, we’re pretty happy supplying ourselves at the moment.”
Another downside is Alpine has struggled to get their Academy drivers onto the F1 grid in the same way Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes have.
On that point, it was recently rumoured the team was considering a partnership with Williams to give the likes of Guanyu Zhou and Christian Lundgaard a potential path from F2.
And Alpine racing director Davide Brivio, who was known for promoting youngsters into MotoGP at Suzuki, has spoken of that challenge.
“It’s quite obvious, the fact that we don’t have a partner team makes things a little bit more difficult because the young drivers [would have to] be included in our Alpine main team,” he told RaceFans.
“In my previous experience I could appreciate when you have young athletes, rider or driver, they are of course strongly motivated, they really want to achieve and they are really willing to. But it has to be always a good mix of experience and talent and also it depends on the situation.
“Here in Formula 1, there is, of course, a new generation coming up and you can see, you can appreciate how these young drivers are performing since the beginning. But also we have Fernando [Alonso], he’s not that young, but he’s experienced and his talent [is] still very important.
“But for sure we have the academy programme, we look at that and if there are opportunities, it would be nice to use it,” he concluded.