Marcin Budkowski is concerned that Alpine being the only team running Renault engines means there is extra pressure on them to be powerful from the start next year. 

An ‘engine freeze’ will come into effect when the 2022 power units are developed, which means the teams will not be able to make significant changes to the construction of their engines until the new formula is launched – pencilled in for the 2025 season.

As Renault and Alpine no longer supply a customer team following McLaren’s move to Mercedes power this year, the team have logged less than a third of the mileage of the Mercedes runners on the grid throughout the season, which has severely limited the amount of data available to them.