Exclusive – Interview on the withdrawal of Renault engines with Christian Cornille, CEO of Mecachrome

What was your feeling after the official announcement of the discontinuation of the development of the Renault engine in Formula 1?

Like all Aubigny employees, who are very fond of motorsport and specifically Formula 1, it is a true heartbreak. It is a world of passion, we are passionate about motorsport, we have been passionate for over 30 years about the Renault adventure, about the Benetton adventure, about the Alpine adventure. These adventures have been rich in emotions for all the teams. Seeing this sequence come to an end today brings us a lot of emotions and a feeling of heartbreak. We are industrialists but above all individuals who have emotions, and the first reaction is inevitably emotional, filled with sadness.

Will your partnership with Alpine F1 Team automatically end at the end of the 2025 season with the brand? Are you still considering collaborating with them?

Alpine remains an important player in the automotive sector for us because we do not only collaborate on Formula 1 activities. Of course, the latter represented about half of our activities with this manufacturer. Alpine remains an important player in the world of endurance and motorsport in other competitions. We will try to maintain our relationship with them. But for Formula 1, our collaboration is ending and will end quickly, in part by the end of 2024 for some activities. And by the end of 2025 for the rest of the activities.

Will your follow-up continue next season?

Yes, we will support them to try to do our best in the 2025 championship with the current engine. However, our assembly activities will end this year, in a very, very short term since in a few days, we will no longer have activities for a certain number of our employees. By the end of October, we will no longer have a role to play in this sector. It’s a shock, and we will have to adapt very quickly. I am working on this with our social partners to try to find solutions.

Were you kept informed of the upcoming decisions by the management of the Renault Group? Do you have a word to say?

We were kept informed as information became public. When the first announcement was made, we were informed right after. I do not consider that we were not informed. However, we did not have exclusive information. We were informed right after the public announcements.

What are the consequences for your group, especially your employees who were in charge of assembling Formula 1 engines?

These employees will be redirected to other activities fairly quickly. Activities that we still have in motorsport. But these activities will not be able to cope with this halt. Moreover, we are exploring opportunities in motorsport with all the other manufacturers that we are trying to contact to offer them our services. If by chance these opportunities do not materialize, which unfortunately may happen since the manufacturers have been preparing their teams for a long time and do not need Mecachrome, we will have to redirect our employees to other activities related to Defense or aeronautics.

Are you open to opportunities with other F1 teams?

Yes, of course. If some teams are interested in collaborating with Mecachrome now that we no longer have an exclusive relationship with Alpine in Formula 1. This relationship has ended, so we have reached out to a number of teams to try to cooperate because the world of F1 is our universe. It is a universe for which we are passionate about and for which we believe we can bring something. We are aware that this announcement comes at the worst possible time for us to find opportunities as all other engine manufacturers have already made their preparations. Unfortunately, it is a little too late to find partnerships.

Will you rely on your more than 20 years of experience in the world of Formula 1 as well as your key role in Formula 2 and Formula 3 to convince teams to collaborate with you?

This is what we hope. We want to show how Mecachrome was also a tool at the service of the performance of a Formula 1 team.

Can the end of your collaboration with Alpine have an impact on your development of Formula 2 and Formula 3 engines?

Quite so. This has an impact because it is necessary to know that motorsport was an important activity on which we were amortizing fixed costs. It was an activity in which we had workshops that were shared for all motorsport activities. Today, half of our business is gone. Mechanically, the cost of our produced parts, the cost of F2 and F3 engines will increase. Now, we need to enter into discussions with our partner and try to see with them if there is a way to regain an economic balance in one way or another. This is what we will focus on in the coming weeks, once we have fully integrated all the consequences of this decision. Every week, we receive a little more information because, on the Alpine side, the decision-making process has been relatively quick and has not necessarily given their teams enough time to fully understand the implications. So we are in this phase and indeed, our customers are all contacting us asking if this will have consequences. We inform them that potentially there will be some, as the economic balance, which was satisfactory previously, is no longer so and we need to find it again.

This is also harmful from a technical point of view for Mecachrome.

Of course, the cooperation was so close, so intimate, that it was not limited to just a service. When we faced difficulties, Alpine was by our side, and vice versa when they did. It was a truly long-standing partnership.

Luca de Meo announced that there will be no gardening leave for the employees of Viry who wish to join other teams. Some of their employees are already in contact with other manufacturers. Could some of your employees also leave you if your F1 activities end there?

Of course. It is obvious that some of our most talented colleagues have been poached by a number of companies. These employees are inevitably questioning themselves and some will definitely leave, that’s for sure.