2021 Alpine F1 Team

[Wouter]

[RedNEO]

That Spanish article better be correct that the new car can fit the new engine because a freeze is looking likely before they will have another chance to introduce it.

[Scorpaguy]

Any videos of the WRC stages?

[RedNEO]

Any videos of the WRC stages?

[RedNEO]

[RedNEO]

Luca de Meo talking about the reason for why he hired Brivio..

Finally, de Meo - who was instrumental in attracting former Suzuki MotoGP boss Davide Brivio to Alpine - underscored the qualities of Alpine's new racing director.

"He is certainly the outgoing world champion of Moto GP with Suzuki, on two wheels," he said. "But it doesn't matter if there are four wheels now.

"He is an excellent professional, he knows the feel of a track, the importance of having a close-knit team, entrusting everyone with a specific role, he knows how to organize the work."

https://f1i.com/news/395782-renault-bos ... -2021.html

[ncx]

[diffuser]

Pretty quiet here....

[PowerandtheGlory]

Does anyone have news on the New car/engine.. are they just evolving the current engine? Or is the ‘new’ engine going to debut- or is it just a new cooling setup?

[RedNEO]

Does anyone have news on the New car/engine.. are they just evolving the current engine? Or is the ‘new’ engine going to debut- or is it just a new cooling setup?

Nobody really knows, we’ve had one Spanish article claiming the new engine can be deployed in this years car and the words of pat fry who’s saying they focused on everything outside of the token budget like aero ect.. He didn’t necessarily say what tokens they are using or if the engine will be different though. Then we had an insider I’m guessing saying they are spending tokens on rear suspension and cooling for aero purposes. So far nobody actually knows if they would need tokens to replace the engine but spending tokens on cooling is is obviously designed to get more out of both aero and engine.

[RedNEO]

Pretty quiet here....

Before the storm

[Blackout]

Cyril taking the walk...that surprises me.

I think they will rue the day...had a good 2020.

Not at all. 2020 had it's progress, but that was due only thanks to having Daniel Ricciardo and Ocon there, and specifically how Daniel requested a car that was harder to drive but unlocks more speed. And second of all, and more importantly, the undeniable fact that all Ferrari powered outfits - for the most part of the season - has by all means completely vanished from the picture in the general top 5 standings, and then there is the issue of RedBull having repetitive DNF's and some covid related issues with other drivers.

Yes, Renault was reliable and stable to find themselves in being able to perform, and honor is due where it belongs.

That said, Abiteboul has not been professional in his position by any means, and always seemed much more like somebody actually holding progress back instead of being the factor that causes improvement.

I will very much stand by the fact that Ferrari was vastly more competitive under Arrivabene than it was under Binotto. Binotto was, and is, the wrong man at the wrong place.

Likewise, Abiteboul was the wrong man at the wrong place from the beginning. Hell, he was the wrong man at the wrong place at what was it, Caterham? aswell. I never got how that guy got at Enstone, but that's beyond me.

I think appointing 'Mr Suzuki' is the most promising and positive thing to happen at Renault right now.
Ricciardo leaving is a pain, no doubt. Alonso is a great aquirement and I think this new CEO is absolutely magnificient, and to me finally sounds like the right person at the right place.

Just as I believe Capito is the right man at the right place right now at Williams.

Ask me, Abiteboul @ Renault (or quite frankly in F1 in general) falls under the very same categories as Claire @ Williams, Kaltenborn @ Sauber, Binotto @ Ferrari, Mattiaci @ Ferrari, and so on.

I wouldn't concider it like Whitmarsh @ Mclaren for example. Though Mclaren could have done better, they could have been far, far worse. I think Mclaren didn't fare well under the return of Ron Dennis either.

It's good to hear and read 'fresh', decent, blood coming in to F1.

It makes me much more positive and happy for my favourite sport to read about this people over the negatives that are in and have been in the sport like Mazepin, Storey, Ericsson, Palmer, etc.

Personally, i believe actions like we are seeing now @ Alpine are what SHOULD have been happening 5 years ago, when Renault was announcing their supposed 'aim' at becoming WDC and WCC again, as i never have seen anything even remotely indicating anything like that but empty words.

Instead, Alpine as the current Enstone outfit, actually is showing signs of putting arrows in the basket and aim for the bullseye.

From all teams that to me are indicating progress for the coming like 5 years, both Alpine and Aston Martin show the MOST of actually 'investing' to get there.

Neither Williams, Ferrari, Haas or Alfa Romeo are showing anything in that area.

Not completely true.
The 2020 car improved a lot. Only RP (and maybe Williams) made bigger improvements in average qualy pace. That's one of the main reasons Renault scored almost two times more points than 2019...
But they didnt improve enough to beat RP or MCL in the WCC.

Abiteboul is one of the main reasons Renault fell back a bit in 2019 and 2020 in the standigs*. He did a good job until 2019 then he ruined it from 2019. His bad strategic decisions slowed the team's progression and cost/will cost dearly in 2020 and 2021, and his bad management on the operational side cost too many points in the championship.

So his departure is no surprise and is good news, on the paper.

But why did the team fall back in 2019 and 2020?

Everybody is talking about the 2021 freeze but Renault was practicing freezing before it was cool. They froze their own chassis+aero in 2019 and that's the main reason they lost.

For 2020, they decided to unfreeze the aero and rework it but they kept the internals unchanged, to spare ressources for the next-gen car...

And despite that, despite the fact the 2018, 2019 and 2020 cars where extremely similar on the mechanical side, the reliability remained problematic.

The team improved in almost every area (except strategy) in 2020 but sadly 2 teams scored more points. RP improved more on the performance side thanks to their pink W10 while Mclaren had two scoring drivers/cars. So the lack of reliability of the second car is the one of the reasons Renault lost the battle in 2020.
And maybe the car didn't improve enough on the performance side.. which is no surprise since the RS.20 is an RS.19B.

This car could have improved more if Renault wasnt tightfisted/completely abnsorbed by the next-gen car and if they had revamped its concept completely in 2020 or 2019, as Mclaren did in 2019 (and 2020) after their 2018 campaign, which looked a lot like the Renault 2019 season...

For 2021, the team will be forced to freeze the car, again...

That's why I fear the 2021 challenge will be a much tougher one for Alpine and Renault, because of the 2021 PU, the 2021 chassis and the opponents level.

The 2021 PU will just be a B-spec of the 2020 one. The latter was a good PU, it retained its good performance level and improved its reliability a lot, but it was already a B version of the 2019 one, because Renault was focusing on its ex 2021 2022 PU. So I don't expect huge improvements on this side.

[diffuser]

On the B side of that, 2021 is a CAP year so everyone has the same 140M spending limits. In 2020 teams like McLaren and Ferrari were hit hard by covid and got as late a start on the 2021 challenger as Renault. Plus everyone has the same limitations. The 2020 Renault had alot more grip coming out of slow corners than McLaren, an on going issue with McLare for several years. So even though they're running an older chassis, they will likely be better in slow corners than there main rival.

[JordanMugen]

Livery speculation: You'd expect the car to be painted the above colour, but Renault F1 Team do weird things so it seems unpredictable. They only painted their F1 cars in the trademark R.S. Liquid Yellow for two seasons -- albeit a matte version, then they went to the that fluorescent yellow did not match their darn garage or team uniforms.







Logic would say the car should be painted just like the LMP2 car, but logic never seems to apply to liveries coming out of Enstone... The bizarrely light blue on the Tricolore of the test livery, hints at a Mild Seven Benetton-like colour being used as per a minority of Alpine race cars, in contrary to all logic and in contrary to this colour not being available on Alpine road cars.



Edit -- By all means the baby blue looks nice, it is not a bad colour.



But there is NO brand continuity for Alpine between the LMP2/road cars and the F1, just as there was no brand continuity between the following:

looks nothing like:


Why do Enstone insist on these illogical liveries!? You can even see the Liquid Yellow Megane in the background that looks nothing close to the F1 car. They could have painted the F1 car liquid yellow and metallic grey like the RS01, and it would have looked so classy -- such a shame.

Double edit - the non-metallic baby blue definitely seems a closer match the official artwork and seems like the way they will go with the livery.

[PlatinumZealot]

Blue is fine. Whether dark, metallic, sky, baby or royal.

It could even be a royal sky baby made of dark metal blue for what most people can see. The colour calibration of Sky TV will dull the colours anyway.