History of Renault engine

[dmaz]

Do you know when Renault sold its engine to Mecachrome? Did they sell it to another company in 1988?

Thanks.

[Dino IV]

Mecachrome, located near Magny-Cours, has been working in association with Renault since the early seventies. When Renault Sport, a merger from Renault Gordini and Alpine and housed in the old Gordini-factory, started supplying customer F1 teams with their Turbo V6 in 1983, the couldn't cope with all the work themselves and diverted that work to Mecachrome. And both pulled out in 1986.

When Renault returned to F1 at the end of that decade in 1988 with Williams, it was Renault Sport that designed and supplied the engines. However in 1992 Ligier forced a three year customer deal on Renault and once again Mecachrome took care of that extra work. When that deal ended, Benetton got the Renaults for 1995 and Renault Sport and Mecachrome where sharing the work now in supplying both Williams and Benetton.

So when Renault pulled Renault Sport out of F1 at the end of the 1997 season, Mecachrome took over the engines and started developing and supplying those to customer teams. Ofcourse some engineering wasn't familiar to Mecachrome so Renault Sport detached a small group of their own personell to Mecachrome for the time being.

Ol' fox Briatore took his chance, founded a company called Super Performance Competition Engineering and already in spring 1998 he came to a deal to buy all the engines Mecachrome could provide and he'd sell them again to customer teams under the name Supertec for the 1999 and 2000 season.

Cheers,
Dino