And he gets a 10 position grid penalty for his first start.
New engine, the 5th they’ve used.
Alpine (Renault) will stop producing engines in 2025 and from 2026 will become a Merc customer team.
Sad.
I blame Adrian Newey.
Back when KERS first entered the rules Adrian wanted to do a light version himself and Renault were only superficially involved whereas Mercedes themselves got heavily involved in the hybrid system and modelling and controlling it discovering several strengths Adrian (and me if I’m honest) didn’t realise were there.
So once hybrid became a bigger part of the overall engine performance they were years behind.
From my experience I would say their IC engines were the best of them all. The turbo engine never was in a good enough chassis and the V10 did pretty well.
FWIW when Lotus fitted the Honda engine which they (and Honda and the publicity) had assured everybody was the best they were 2 secs per lap slower than us at the same fuel consumption at the first test in 1987, whereas with the much derided (by them and the press which believed them) Renault they were more competitive than that in 1986.
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…and from a more superficial POV, we edge ever-closer to a one-make series… 
the end of F1
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draweth nearer!
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Hence me giving the thread the title that I did.