Alpine are said to be ‘suspicious’ over supposed rivals power unit gains over the off season.
Gazzetta dello Sport have reported that Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull have all made performance improvements for their respective 2023 power units.
This is the second year of F1’s five-year engine freeze where manufacturers can only make changes with regards to reliability.
The Italian publication said that ‘modifications to increase the reliability of the engine, even without a direct performance purpose also helps the power’ with them claiming that Ferrari have found a ‘30hp’ increase along with Mercedes who have apparently gained 16hp and Red Bull (Honda) 10hp.
Last year the Prancing Horse were forced to turn down their engine due to reliability concerns during the second half of the season, reportedly costing them up to 0.3s per lap on some circuits.
It is believed that fixes have been made to allow them to run the power unit more aggressively.
It’s also detailed by Gazzetta dello Sport that Mercedes have reduced internal mechanical friction within the power unit along with a new lubricant formulation from Petronas that will increase combustion efficiency.
Red Bull have been said to have improved reliability with their MGU-H and MGU-K systems.
Alpine- ‘What is a pure genuine reliability issue?’
Renault on the other hand are believed to have no performance gain and have only improved the reliability of their power unit with Alpine reported to have found the other manufacturers’ improvements ‘suspicious’ according to Planet F1.
Alpine Executive Director Bruno Famin asked during an interview with The Race: “what is a pure genuine reliability issue?
He added: “Behind the reliability issue you often have a potential performance gain, of course, the limit is not always clear.
“If you have a water pump issue as we had in ‘22, it’s quite clear it’s a pure reliability issue, there is nothing to gain in having a better or different water pump.
“If I need to change the material of the piston rings, ok, you will be able to have something stronger to have more performance, then where is the limit? It’s not obvious.
“The process in 2022 with the FIA and the other PU manufacturers has been quite good, it has been transparent at least in that everybody was aware of the request, and this is very good. It has been managed well by the FIA.
“Now I am expecting the FIA to be a bit stronger in the future.
“It has been quite tolerant in ‘22 and I think it was quite normal because everybody was affected by a reliability issue.
“We had 30, 40, 50, 70 requests from the different manufacturers. Then everybody was affected by this kind of problem.
“I am expecting the FIA to be a bit stronger in the future, but I have no new information.”
Only time will tell when teams delve into the data as to whether certain outfits have found horsepower gains over their rivals.
Not the first time this has been an occurrence
The 2022-2026 engine freeze is not the first time F1 has implemented this measure in its history.
The first engine freeze was imposed during the 2.4-litre V8 era, after the 2006 Chinese Grand Prix.
By the end of that year, Ferrari, Mercedes, Toyota, BMW, Honda and Cosworth were all very close in terms of performance, due to the V8 engines being very prescriptive.
However, at the start of 2007, it became clear that there was a bigger spread in performance between engine manufacturers than there had been at the end of 2006, with Renault in particular losing out to some of the other outfits such as Mercedes, Ferrari and BMW.
Many believed that some teams had taken the freeze more literally than others and found performance gains by justifying changes to the FIA under the guise of reliability.
The manufacturers that had fallen back were then allowed to catch back up as they were given a discrepancy period – however the fact remains that teams will try and find a competitive advantage, in any way possible.