6 ALPINE FRESH
Renault’s had a rebranding, and can Alonso win a race?
If you were feeling distinctly uncharitable, you might say that modern Formula One has become an extended advert with occasional bouts of sporting endeavour. Ignore the marketing fluff though and there’s still fun to be had.
Still, there’s nothing like a fresh lick of paint to try and confuse F1 onlookers – Mercedes has been five different teams, Aston Martin is on its sixth rebranding and so is Alpine. In fact, Alpine is so confused it’s been Renault twice. And Fernando Alonso has just joined the team for the third time. At least he knows where they keep the coffee in the factory.
It’s really rather impossible not to be excited at the return of a man with the sort of raw talent that puts him up there with the greats. Yet one of the Spaniard’s many gifts is managing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he’d called his career moves better he’d surely be the one rivalling Schumacher’s title haul by now.
Which doesn’t bode well for the new Alpine team, frankly, but it isn’t just the paint job that’s new – out has gone previous team boss Cyril Abiteboul and in come a new trio of managers in the form of Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi, executive director Marcin Budkowski (poached from the FIA) and racing director Davide Brivio (a surprise signing from Suzuki’s MotoGP outfit).
Obviously a savvy media operator like Fernando won’t come out and say that he’s going to win the title this year, or anything quite so louche. But when he says “we have to deliver the best we can at every opportunity”, you know he’s going to be a bit of a taskmaster. He certainly hasn’t lost his touch over the past couple of years either, if you were worried. He’s been out and won at Le Mans, was crowned WEC champion and had two cracks at the Indy 500. Speaking of cracks, he did break his jaw in a bicycle accident in training, but his doctors are plenty confident he’ll be fit to race.
Every season the teams come out with nonsense about their five-year plans for world domination, and it inevitably ends in tears. Renault has steadily closed the gap to the front in recent years (three podiums in 2020 were a boost) but hasn’t challenged for a championship since 2006. It has to work, though, because Alpine has a key role in Renault CEO Luca de Meo’s five-year plan for world domination, producing three new electric cars (a hot hatch, sporting SUV and an electric A110 replacement co-developed with Lotus). It’s easy to forget the Alpine car company’s relaunch only started in 2017, so the racing team has a lot to do to translate track success into worldwide publicity. No pressure then lads.
On paper the Alpine set-up is solid – it’s a reasonably funded works team populated with top-rate talent. Will Fernando bring that final sprinkling of superstar magic the team needs? Or will we see the frustrated Alonso who can be a chaotic destabilising influence on a team? Either way, it’s going to be fun to watch.