Former Alpine boss opens up on one of the major issues behind Renault's F1 team's failure

Former Alpine boss Marcin Budkowski recently revealed that one of the major issues with Renault's F1 project is its high ambitions but a lack of resources to support it.

The French squad's turmoil has been a highlight of its stay in F1. It came to the sport with a five-year plan in 2016. Since then that plan has continued to get delayed but the team seems to have peaked as a midfield contender.

Alpine won a race in its current guise in 2021 but that was more a result of fortune than sheer performance. This season, however, their aim to bring the car's performance closer to the front of the grid has failed. On the other hand, the team has been leapfrogged by the likes of McLaren and Aston Martin.

While this led to the sudden departure of Otmar Szafneur, Laurent Rossi, and Alain Permaine, it also exposed one major issue with the team. The divergence in the world of expectations vs reality.

Former Alpine boss Marcin Budkowski, himself a victim of the familiar Renault culling in the past, revealed that it all comes to high ambitions but a lack of compatible funding that aids the growth.

As quoted by formu1a.uno, Budkowski said:

“I will say, in general, that Alain [Prost] and I often see things in a very similar way, so when Alain says something, I generally agree with that. I had a chat with Alain yesterday, just after I found out about the changes, so we talked yesterday morning. I read the article in the press with curiosity."

“Unfortunately, it’s not often talked about, but the main problem with Renault’s involvement in Formula 1 was that the ambitions were always very high, and the financial means were not adequate," he added. "Every year there were higher and higher ambitions, and every year, unfortunately, the resources that were put into it were not.

"Let’s say we were not at the level of those ambitions. But these are the things, let’s say… that people at the Renault board didn’t always want to hear.”

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Will Alpine realize what it needs to do next?

The question at the moment with Alpine comes down to one very simple thing. Will Renault realize that it needs to splurge a massive amount of capital to be successful in F1? And if it does, will it make the changes accordingly?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This is the Renault group's third or fourth cycle of doing something similar with no results.

Is it about time that the team understands what it needs to do to achieve its goal? The next few steps will be interesting to see for that very reason.