Renault won Le Mans outright in 1978 and then concentrated on developing its pioneering turbo-supercharged V6 for Formula One. It made a comeback to top flight Prototype racing in 2021 under its Alpine brand, taking over the outgoing Rebellion team’s Oreca produced R13-Gibson. It retained the car’s GL458 naturally aspirated 4.5 litre V8 for the sole example it campaigned, which was revamped under ‘grandfathering’ conditions so as to be permitted to race the new Hypercars from Toyota and Glickenhaus/Pipo Moteurs.

This top flight WEC effort was run by the Signature team, which had campaigned an LM P2 car in Alpine colours through 2019 and ’20. The team won outright at Sebring and Monza in 2022. Now it has been forced to temporarily step back to LM P2 while awaiting a new Alpine contender for the 2024 season, which is being developed to LMDh rather than Hypercar regulations.

Again built by Oreca, for this new car’s engine Alpine has looked to Mecachrome. This is hardly surprising - and was predicted by RET - since Renault has a long relationship with Mecachrome. The French company has for decades supplied components for Renault Formula One engines and has often been responsible for engine build.

Mecachrome previously developed an LM P1 engine, the V634, a turbocharged 3.4 litre V6 that was used by the Ginetta team in 2018, including at Le Mans. That was a derivative of the engine it already produced as the spec unit for Formulae Two and Three, here as in Formula Two having a single turbo set within the vee.

Full specifications of the new LMDh engine have not yet been released but we do know that it is again a 3.4 litre V6 with a single turbo so we can assume it is a further evolution of the 2018 unit. This evolution is a product of a joint development programme by Mecachrome and the Alpine Formula One engine department at Viry Chatillon, Paris. In the Alpine 424 Beta racecar the Mecachrome engine will be married to the spec LMDh Xtrac transmission and Bosch/ Williams hybrid system.