Official: Renault ends engine programme for 2026

[Greg Locock]

GM have the mother of all NIH complexes. Transferring IP other than on a monkey see monkey do approach requires a lot of work on the part of the donor.

[PapayaFan481]

Renault could recover money by selling the IP of their partially developed PU to another entrant.
Wasn't some US automobile company with the letters M and G in it's initials supposed to be interested in entering F1?

Seems to me that the most logical solution all round would have been for Renault to sell the team to Andretti Racing and include the PU IP in the sale - unless there is cross-pollination with their other PU projects.

Of course the fact that it's logical is surety why it wasn't done

[AR3-GP]

Renault could recover money by selling the IP of their partially developed PU to another entrant.
Wasn't some US automobile company with the letters M and G in it's initials supposed to be interested in entering F1?

Seems to me that the most logical solution all round would have been for Renault to sell the team to Andretti Racing and include the PU IP in the sale - unless there is cross-pollination with their other PU projects.

Of course the fact that it's logical is surety why it wasn't done

Logical for who? Why would Renault-Alpine giveaway a steady income train to GM?

[purestpurist]

I think Carlos Ghosn was the executive who understood the value of the F1 team and supported it. It's been downhill ever since his departure.

Well... according to Newey:

“We were in this position where Renault hadn’t produced a competitive engine in the turbo hybrid era,” said Newey in the F1 Podcast. “You know, that happens first year. Okay, it’s new rules, we all make mistakes.” Crisis talks between the team and Renault were arranged to try and get some action on the engine issues. “We went to see Carlos Ghosn, the boss of Renault at Champs-Élysées, Christian, Helmut and myself, to try to put pressure on him to up the budget and basically ask if he can free more resources so the engine division can accelerate their program… they needed more people and more money,” Newey added.

“Ghosn’s reply was ‘I have no interest in Formula 1. I am only in it because my marketing people say I should be,’” noted Newey. “That was such a depressing place to be.”

Ghosn.... the chap that travels incognito in a music case to avoid Japanese judicial control

Yep, I'd say he has a good judgement balance

Not to drag things off topic but his case in Japan was rather bizarre and led to human rights groups issuing statements on his behalf. My impression was that the charges were probably true but equally applicable to most high level executives, and he was only charged for political reasons.

The way he turned Nissan around was also very impressive.

[bigblue]

"When I arrived four years ago, the group wanted to stop F1. If it's still there, it's because I saved the thing. But we don't have the structure to be at the forefront of battery chemistry development, software management, energy recovery.

"It's not just putting an engine on the bench and saying: 'Hey boss, I'm doing 415 kW!'"

Oh dear Renault, perhaps you should be at the forefront of these things? (from motorsport.com).

[toraabe]

I think that Amg Powertrain gladly wants to hire some of the seniors at Renault F1...

[lio007]

According to AMuS next to Ferrari, Audi and Red Bull are also in the hunt for Viry-engineers:
https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/for ... rari-audi/

[basti313]

Well, Ferrari is and was all-in on 2026. I always said...just judging from Hamilton moving there, they have the most money in the project. That will be very interesting, either they nail it or they will have heads rolling.

But there is a budget cap now, so the PU manufacturers can't throw in a crazy amount of money.

Similar or clearly even more than the budget cap for the teams, this is to some degree a "paper tiger".
They simply put the engineers to designing "boat engines" or something like that and can suddenly afford much more and much more expensive engineers, if they work only part time on the F1 project

I think this is one of the reasons for Renault leaving. If you do not generate these loopholes within the company and if you do not have the funds...you are not competitive.