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RenaultSport: A Painful Goodbye
Words by Andrea Balti / Photo by Daniél Rikkard
I started this piece in a thousand different ways, but I always come back to a blank sheet of paper. I’ve never been good with goodbyes, let alone when it comes to losing a piece of us. RenaultSport has officially closed its doors for almost a year now, leaving Alpine to carry on a competitive legacy made up of exceptional successes that have consecrated legends, both among drivers and models of the transalpine brand. It seems like yesterday that as a child I was waiting for nothing but the right moment to steal the driver’s seat at the wheel of my father’s R5 GT Turbo, not even reaching the pedals, but dreaming of driving for the pure pleasure of hearing that engine roar under my body. Enough years have passed and one of the most vivid experiences I have had with a car is on board a Renault, a Megane RS Trophy.
Summer of 2019. We introduce a new column called “Alps Attack”. The goal is only one, to enhance the pleasure of driving through an itinerary that crosses the winding mountain roads that we love so much, the ideal backdrop for a tour through five, perhaps six Alpine passes over the eastern French side. No doubt about the right car for the job, the hot hatch par excellence, all without even knowing that in a few years it would no longer be possible, because RenaultSport would have stopped the production of its two most coveted sports cars, the Clio RS and the Megane RS.
There is no doubt that in order to sculpt certain moments in one’s mind, certain elements need to find the perfect fit and in my opinion there is no better match than that represented by a sports car and a road full of curves and free of traffic. An intense two-day climb that surprised for the loneliness offered by the mountain passes crossed, a silence broken by the scream of the 300-horsepower 4-cylinder turbo engine of the RS family’s workhorse, dressed up and sharpened thanks to the Trophy spec. The ultimate tool to make certain memories indelible and not let the passage of time and events fade the purity of the day when I discovered an epic road like the Col du Galibier.
Going up and down along hundreds of kilometers in which the only break from the hairpin bends was characterized by equally tortuous sections that connected the valleys in question is like riding a roller coaster without safety systems. That shiver that rises up your spine, that desire to go further and find out what lies behind that ridge. All this is priceless and is accentuated by the involvement that a small sports car is able to offer to its driver.
Three years later I jump on board the new Megane, the E-Tech Electric, a 220 horsepower 100% EV that has nothing to do with my beloved yellow chick signed RS. Don’t get me wrong, the new E-Tech is an exceptional electric crossover, with a personal and captivating shape, a suitable mileage for a 360-degree coexistence and a spot-on cabin, but this particular sense of progress has literally slammed the door to fun and involvement as we old school car guys intend it, the thrill of experiences now destined to be wonderful memories. That to RenaultSport is a goodbye that hurts, I mean really. I just have to add memories after memories, keep them as such and imagine how many other fantastic roads I could have traveled behind the wheel of new RS that will never exist. Thanks for the wonderful memories lived together, adieu.
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