MAY 23, 2003

Renault plans engine strategy announcement

The Renault F1 team will announce its engine plans for 2004 on Tuesday. It is anticipated that the company will announce that work is already well advanced on a more conventional V10 engine than the current wide-angle V10 unit. As we understand it preliminary design work has been carried out on the new engine for some months but the company was not willing to make a decision until the F1 teams had decided on the engine regulations for 2004. That decision has now been taken with the plan being for teams to have one engine per car per weekend. Once that decision was taken the team was able to go ahead with the development of the design.

Whether or not Renault will announce any new recruits in the engine division remains to be seen but there continue to be rumors suggesting that Mario Illien will be joining the team. The timing of the announcement suggests that the team has something interesting to announce as it will be in the spotlight in the run up to the Monaco GP.