In France, Alpine employees will go on strike in parallel with a protest rally at the Italian Grand Prix to protest against Renault’s plans to discontinue its Formula 1 engine program.
The Renault factory team wants to switch to customer supply from Mercedes from 2026 after CEO Luca de Meo decided to pursue a more cost-effective future.
But Alpine Racing’s Works Council (CSE: Comite Social et Economique), which represents workers at the Viry-Chatillon site, believes that abandoning the French engine would be a “betrayal” of Alpine’s original vision and a “shameful abandonment of the team’s heritage and its 50 years of high-tech history and expertise”.
On Friday, “around a hundred employees” will come to Monza as part of a trip organized by the CSE to publicly protest against this plan.
There will be two groups distributed in the grandstands on the main straight and at the exit of the Parabolica, displaying a banner “with a clear and non-aggressive message advocating the retention of a French engine in F1” while wearing a white T-shirt with the Alpine logo and the message #ViryOnTrack and a black armband.
The black armband should also be worn by track staff in the Alpine garage “if possible”.
Meanwhile, in Viry-Chatillon, “the vast majority of workers who were unable to attend the event will go on strike in solidarity with this movement” from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
There will be “clear signs of discontent” and local officials will also be present, as the city itself has “called on elected officials and the public to attend.”
None of these measures will “prevent track operations,” the CSE statement said.
Before the Mercedes engine deal can be finalised, Renault and Alpine are currently conducting a formal review of a so-called “transformation project” for Viry-Chatillon, which is to be diverted to other Alpine and Renault-related activities.
This met with strong resistance from the local workers, who accused Renault management of being “deaf to any dialogue.”
They describe the plan as “a shock and a disaster for automotive innovation, French technological sovereignty and industrial innovation” and believe that the Alpine brand’s goals can be achieved while sticking with the F1 engine – which was a disappointment in the era of V6 turbo hybrids.
Progress is abandoned
In a detailed document seen by The Race, the CSE admits that “the engine suffers from a power deficit due to poor anticipation of the 2014 technical rule changes” and claims that this is responsible for “approximately 20% of the car’s overall power deficit”.
However, the Renault Group’s destabilising management of the entire project, with four technical directors in Viry and team bosses in Enstone, is criticised, and the rest of the deficit is attributed to “the chassis of the Enstone plant, which is difficult to improve in the face of successive changes of management”.
The CSE firmly believes that the intensive work already done on the engine of the year 2026, which will be built according to completely different rules and with an almost 50:50 split between combustion engine and electric drive, has led to a “technological breakthrough”.
They say millions have already been invested and spent on Project 2026. More than 100 “breakthrough” concepts have been studied and almost a third of them have shown “promising performance on the test bench and are expected to be integrated into the 2026 engine.”
The plan was to integrate this into a test engine by the end of 2024, which is already approaching the expected 2026 performance target, has shown no “critical” reliability failures in testing, and has a 12% reduced length to improve chassis integration.
But instead of being able to continue with a “well-designed engine with clear potential” and aiming for a supposed time gain of “0.5 seconds per lap” through tailor-made integration, “the shutdown of the F1 engine sounds like a definitive end to F1 activities in France in 2026”.
There is talk of a “journey of no return”: “The technological hurdles are too high to overcome, there is a brain drain of elite specialists and the investments are unaffordable.” Because a return to Formula 1 in the future would be “too expensive”.
“UNCOMPREHENSIVE” LOGIC
The CSE also criticized other aspects of the justification for the “transformation plan” in terms of how it supposedly helps Viry.
The skills of Viry’s employees, it is said, are not aligned with the key innovation areas in the automotive sector, namely battery chemistry and industrialization, “software-defined vehicles” and autonomous driving.
It goes on to say that more than 80 percent of the site’s activities are linked to Formula 1, as is its quality and attractiveness for workers – who “will have no choice but to leave France to pursue their Formula 1 career abroad”. The CSE suggests that this strategy is being deliberately pursued “to delay and minimise the impact of an expensive voluntary redundancy plan”.
“Mr. De Meo assured us that the soul of the Alpine brand must be nourished by its roots and that separation from them was out of the question,” the CSE statement said.
“In September 2023, in front of hundreds of employees in Enstone and Viry-Chatillon, he committed to reconciling financial resources with the imperatives of technological innovation.
“We do not understand what justifies destroying this elite F1 unit, the Viry-Chatillon site, and betraying its heritage and DNA by implanting the heart of a Mercedes or any other manufacturer into our Alpine F1.
“The announcement of the end of the development and production of French engines for Formula 1 is incomprehensible.
“We cannot imagine that Alpine and the Renault Group would betray their objectives and damage their image. We therefore call on Mr de Meo and his board to reverse this decision.”
Alpine’s answer
Alpine responded later on Thursday to the planned strike action and the Monza protest.
“We are aware of some activities that Viry employees are planning for this weekend,” the statement said.
“We understand from your communication that these will be peaceful protests and that they will not affect the team’s operations. The transformation project is still being evaluated and Alpine management has not yet made a decision.
“The dialogue that began since the project was presented to Viry’s employee representatives in July is important for Alpine’s management and will continue in the coming weeks.”
