Why Alpine is taking the Mercedes gearbox for just one season

Alpine’s decision to take Mercedes’ Formula 1 gearbox for 2026 will give it “headroom” to develop elsewhere for the next series of regulations before building its own in 2027.

Despite protestations from the personnel at the Renault Group’s Viry-Chatillon powertrain headquarters, the decision was made to shutter the French manufacturer’s 2026 engine project and assume a customer deal with Mercedes for the dawn of the new rules.

This came as CEO Luca de Meo and executive adviser Flavio Briatore wished to give the team a clear benchmark to the likes of McLaren and Mercedes, while also reducing the group’s F1 overhead costs.

Team principal Oliver Oakes explained the team’s decision to also take the Mercedes gearbox for 2026 only, stating that he expects the team to build its own for 2027 and beyond.

“We’re taking that [gearbox] just for one year in 2026. It gives us a bit of headroom to during that regulation change to sort of have one less thing to worry about,” Oakes said in an exclusive interview with Autosport.

“But our own gearbox is in the car now and we’re performing, and it will be the same in 2027 as well going forward.

“It’s just purely balancing resource for that one season in 2026, and everybody in the team, they’ve designed, manufactured and built and raced a great gearbox. And it’s clear to see the current results as well.”

Oakes expanded on Alpine’s preparations over the next two seasons, stating that the team was not overtly looking to entirely sacrifice results in 2025 – unlike many of its midfield rivals; Williams, for example, has been vocal in its decision to focus most of its resources on its 2026 car.

He suggested that some of those teams may be openly targeting 2026 as a bid to relieve pressure on themselves in 2025, although conceded that he’d prefer to “go to town” on putting resources into the next generation of cars.

“[Balancing 2025 and 2026], that’s the daily topic at the moment, I think because some teams have been quite vocal about sacrificing 2025.

“How much of that you believe or not, I don’t know. Maybe they’re sort of trying to move some pressure off themselves because most teams know already in December where they’re looking for 2025. And you wonder when teams come out with comments like that…

“From my side, we want to have a good ’25. We’re pretty humble that that’s not going to be easy because there’s quite a lot of carryover from this year.

“And we know we’d love to go more to town on development and balancing resource for 2026, but I guess everybody’s going to be judged the next three years; I think people will judge us on he job we did 23-24-25-26-27 as a period of time rather than just in that moment in F1.

“I’m new in the job, but I find it quite interesting reading stuff online that a lot of people don’t take into context, the sort of background and the build-up to things.

“And the situation we were in as a team, it wasn’t just because of the winter. Things were signed off way earlier. And I think it’s always important to look at the global view. “