PU engineers: is it Ferrari helping Renault or a favor from Alpine?
Today at 03:01 AM
It’s interesting how the same news can be interpreted in completely different ways: a few days ago, L’Equipe published an interview with Luca De Meo, president of the Renault Group, where he explained to the French sports daily the reasoning behind Alpine’s decision to abandon Renault’s power unit from 2026 in favor of the customer version of Mercedes’ unit.
But that’s not the main point of our curiosity; rather, it’s the mention that Ferrari is strengthening its racing department with French technicians, following the arrival of Loic Serra from Mercedes to Maranello as Chassis Technical Director on October 1st, after a long gardening period.
Luca De Meo explained that the Viry-Chatillon facility will not be sold but will remain a strategic center for Renault, as it will be dedicated to other projects such as hydrogen and racing programs like WEC or the Dakar with Dacia: "We don't want to fire anyone, but if there are people attracted by the idea of designing a Formula 1 engine, they will have no trouble finding a place. Fred Vasseur asked us if he could take some of our engineers and if we could waive their gardening period. We won't imprison our guys."
In reality, the Parisian factory at Viry-Chatillon is quite redundant without F1, so it’s easy to imagine that there could be excess staff. Ferrari, therefore, could, by flipping the situation, recruit some of the engineers from the French team (and it’s not necessarily limited to French nationals) to strengthen some of Maranello's departments. However, by picking up employees from those who no longer have a role, it is quite clear that there would be no gardening period.
F1 is undergoing a major phase of transformation in light of the 2026 regulatory revolution, and personnel movements are heavily influenced by the constraints of the mandatory stop period, so much so that there is discussion about abolishing the gardening period. It's clear that if there are opportunities to speed up transitions from one brand to another, some will try to seize every chance.
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