Doug Nye: ‘Alpine-Renault’s first failed F1 attempt - 55 years ago’

It’s incredibly irritating when asked to identify a racing car in an ageing photo, but try as you might the brain cells just will not retrieve the information. Recently I found myself precisely in this situation during a regular Zoom get-together with other like-minded racing enthusiasts around the world. An Australian friend posted the photo in question, showing a rather ugly, long-nosed single-seater. It was plainly French (no Hercule Poirot required for that. In this monochrome print it was that distinctive shade of grey suggesting in reality French bleue…. Oh, and there was a Citroën 2CV parked in the background). I suggested it was perhaps an early Pygmée or a GRAC, but another name was nagging away in the recesses of my mind – I just knew I’d seen this machine before.

And then our pal who’d posted the picture put me right. It was the 1968 Formula 1 prototype Alpine-Renault A350 – the stillborn Alpine Laboratoire, built by the Dieppe firm effectively to nudge Renault into F1. Matra at that time was taking credit as the only all-French F1 contender with its new V12 for driver Jean-Pierre Beltoise. Alpine principal Jean Rédélé – having headed his company’s own advance through F3 and F2 – was keen to take his major backer, Renault, that prestigious extra step back into Grand Prix racing.

Alpine designer Richard Bouleau also had a novel kind of new suspension system in mind, whose capabilities he was keen to explore, while Renault-backed Amédée ‘The Sorcerer’ Gordini had just produced a 3-litre V8 sports racing engine that also happened to meet contemporary F1 regulations.

Construction of a new spaceframe A350 Laboratoire chassis commenced secretively in a corner of the Dieppe workshop. Bouleau also worked with Michelin tyre technicians on a promising new radial-ply racing tyre intended exclusively to harness the special attributes of his ‘flat’ suspension theories. To maintain parallel vertical movement of the wheels the upper locating arms were not anchored at their inboard ends to the rigid chassis, but instead to a kind of Watt link, which could pivot laterally. This system’s geometry kept the wheels perpendicular to the road surface, yet moving vertically as the suspension rose and fell without any substantial change in camber, which would up-edge the tyre and thereby reduce its effective contact patch – and grip – against the road surface beneath. While the A350 chassis would roll into a corner, its wheels remained vertical, keeping the tyre tread-width 100% in contact with the road surface, enhancing grip and braking.

“French prestige in motor racing would depend upon Matra Sport”

Belgian driver Mauro Bianchi drove this secret F1 car at Michelin’s Ladoux test track in April 1968, and subsequently at both Zolder in Belgium and Zandvoort, Holland. He raved about the car’s braking ability, saying he could brake the hefty F1-eligible car at the same point as he would a lightweight Alpine F3 – despite the much higher speed achieved along the approaching straight. At Zandvoort he lapped quickly enough to have qualified midfield for the previous year’s Dutch GP. It was clear that the 300bhp 7200rpm Renault-Gordini V8 engine could not match the 420bhp Cosworth-Ford DFVs, but Rédélé optimistically hoped to nudge his Regie Renault backers into supporting development of a true DFV-baiter for 1969 or ’70. All his company needed was to race the F1 A350 in public… and the French GP at Rouen-les-Essarts was imminent, on July 7, 1968 – now 55 years ago.

So Alpine-Renault was poised to pull its influential masterstroke. An entry was made for Rouen, presumably for Mauro Bianchi to make his F1 debut, only for Renault’s management abruptly to forbid Rédélé from using the Renault-Gordini 3-litre V8 engine at all “in single-seater competition”.

This devastating blow was delivered at the last moment. The Regie’s top brass plainly considered that the head of their satellite concern had let ambition triumph over commercial common sense. With a 120bhp power deficit compared to Ford’s DFV engines in rival Lotus, McLaren and even Tyrrell-entered Matra chassis, an Alpine-Renault debacle at Rouen would put the brand’s reputation at unacceptable risk. One suspects that in particular an insipid Renault performance under the media spotlight inevitable with a new-car debut would have left an exceptionally bad taste, considering that Jackie Stewart had already won in Holland with a Ford engine powering his Matra… and he would be one of the pre-race favourites at Rouen. Being bested by foreign Ford might be bad enough, but being overshadowed by their French rival would be intolerable.

All ideas for a 3-litre Renault F1 engine to race through 1969-70 had been quashed, and the A350 itself was quickly scrapped… only its wheels and the body plug apparently surviving. So Rédélé’s short-lived F1 ambition was foiled, and French prestige in major-league motor racing would depend instead primarily upon Matra Sport – which was French-backed by the Elf oil company, but American owned by Chrysler.

Bouleau’s ‘flat’ suspension went onto the rear ends of the Alpine A220 and A221 sports cars instead. But by the mid-1970s the 2-litre Renault-Gordini V6 engine emerged, followed by a turbo version, and nine years after the fleeting appearance of the Alpine A350, Renault would finally reappear in Grand Prix racing with its in-house RS01 ‘turbocar’ of 1977.

Doug Nye is the UK’s leading motor racing historian and has been writing authoritatively about the sport since the 1960s