Changing the water pump will improve the reliability of Renault engines

Renault, a partner of Alpine's Formula 1 engine, believes that a redesigned water pump for 2023 should take care of the majority of the reliability issues the team encountered this year.

Fernando Alonso's Alpine at Monaco. (Image: Twitter/Alpine)
By Mahaksh Chauhan | Dec 30, 2022 | 2 Min Read follow icon Follow Us

Although Alpine emerged as the best-of-the-rest in terms of speed in 2022, trailing only Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes, it also experienced a string of disappointing retirements. Fernando Alonso was especially irritated by the DNFs because an extended string of engine problems continued practically until the end of the season. After yet another retirement in Mexico, Alonso expressed his opinion that Alpine had not done its due diligence. He said, “I believe we are unprepared. “I guess I’ve destroyed five engines this year. The issue in Australia’s qualifying; the blackout in Austria prevented me from even starting the race. Therefore, I believe that out of 19 races, or almost 50% of them, we haven’t earned the points we deserve.

Engines problem

Although the string of engine issues seemed to be a huge concern, Bruno Famin, Renault’s head of engines, believes that there was nothing fundamentally flawed with the power unit’s core architecture. Instead, he claims that issues with engine auxiliaries, such the water pump, were the focus and would likely be resolved by 2023. Famin, who joined Alpine’s F1 project earlier this year, said, “We have not really got really serious difficulty on the engine itself, on the ICE.” We had issues in Singapore, that much is true. It was actually extremely unusual since it seemed unfathomable that we would experience two different issues within the course of eight circuits, but we did.

Improve ?

According to Famin, Renault does not need to reduce the power unit’s performance because a design change in some of the external components will be sufficient to address the issues that arose in 2022. I don’t think we’re going back in any direction,” he declared. “We will work and have already started working diligently on specifics, particularly on the auxiliary side. “The water pump has caused us problems all season long,” We did the best we could in ’22, but it was obviously insufficient. “We needed to modify the water pump’s fundamental design, and we will do so in ’23. So, we sincerely hope that the issue will be resolved starting in 2019.