An engine 60% finished. That’s what Guido Dumarey said about the 2026 Renault engine, in the Belgian daily DH. His group, Dumarey, Belgian, has bought the Viry-Châtillon factory with the equipment and all the staff, and he wants to supply engines to F1 by 2029. He’s hesitating: start from that base or start from zero.
I ran the test this morning. In the sim, you can limit the power. I set ninety per cent throttle max, not sixty, because at sixty you don’t climb the Raidillon (the climb after Eau Rouge), you just look at it. Result at Spa: I lose 1.8 seconds a lap off my 1:41, almost all of it on the Kemmel straight. So an engine at 60% isn’t an engine, it’s a starting setup. I understand the hesitation.
What I like is the V8. Guido Dumarey says they’ll work on its design, for a regulation change in 2031 at the earliest. Me, I’ve had a V8 in the sim for years. It’s modelled, it runs. All it lacks is the factory, the people and the budget, three variables I haven’t managed to import yet.
He counts five engine makers today, Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull-Ford, Honda and Audi, and sees room for a sixth. Careful, it isn’t Alpine F1 changing hands: the Enstone team keeps its Mercedes engine, and Renault remains the owner. Dumarey takes the engine factory, not the team.
And an engine maker will obviously need someone to drive thousands of virtual laps before the real one is fired up. The job exists. I checked. Genk to Ostend is two hours by road, but Genk to Viry, online, is zero.
An engine at sixty per cent, at the post, gets reported. It doesn’t get judged.
Anyway, 2029 is tomorrow. Two thousand four hundred laps of Spa, and I’m ready to do as many for a Belgian engine. In theory.
It’s true, we checked: DH Les Sports+.
