The situation at Alpine spells doom for the team this year. But the consequences could go much further than just this season, as it puts parent company Renault in a very difficult position. In this third and final part: why might Renault pull out of F1, and what can be done to avoid it?
Renault rebranded their F1 team to Alpine in 2021. Since then, the number of road cars sold by Alpine has steadily increased every year by roughly a 1000 each year. Given that Alpine only has one road car - the A110 - that’s not a bad number at all. And that was essentially the goal of this rebrand: have the F1 team be a marketing vehicle for the brand so that they’d sell more road cars. That’s on top of the goal that every F1 team of course has, which is to win races and championships.
Formula 1 is very expensive
Running an F1 team is not cheap. Even in this costcap era, it’s very difficult to make a team actually profitable. Winning races helps a lot with that, but Alpine is clearly not doing that at all. Another way would be via sponsors and investors. Alpine has plenty of those, including a whopping €600 million in investment last year from a consortium of high profile athletes and celebrities, Ryan Reynolds among them. But if the results don’t improve, then they might walk away just as quickly as they came. Just look at the barebones livery of Haas to see how quickly sponsors ditch you if the results don’t improve. And if the team keeps performing the way it currently does, then that marketing value also vanishes, meaning that they can’t compensate for their losses with the sale of road cars either.
All of which means that if the results don’t improve, the financial picture begins to look very dire for Renault. They might very well come to the conclusion that the team isn’t worth the investment anymore. It wouldn’t even be the first time. In 1985, Renault pulled out of Formula 1 because of the massive financial crisis the company was in. They returned in 2002, but left again in 2010 in the wake of the Crashgate scandal while once again facing financial struggles. In both cases, the car used to be good but then slowly dropped off, meaning that the results were not good enough to justify the expenses any longer.
And it seems increasingly likely that this could happen again. The rumbling in the paddock is that Renault is considering selling the team and just continue as an engine supplier - something they actually did both previous times they left. But there is a way to prevent that, and it’s very simple.
Bruno Famin has to go
The problems at Alpine are manifold. The culture in their upper management is completely rotten. Their car is unreliable and uncompetitive. Their engine, which is made in-house by Renault, is slower than everyone else and is unreliable too. The team doesn’t seem to be making any progress and is instead bleeding talent left and right. And ultimately that all comes back to one man: team principal Bruno Famin.
Famin became team principal in the summer of 2023, after he and the board of Renault fired Otmar Szafnauer. Initially, he was only appointed as interim team principal, and he was tasked with finding a suitable permanent team principal. After searching long and hard - while also saying he wasn’t overly concerned with finding someone - he came to the conclusion that he himself was best suited for the job.
The thing is, I really don’t think that’s true. Before he became team principal, Famin was in charge of the engine development. You know, the engine that lacks about 30 horsepower compared to the others. The engine that is highly uncompetitive. When he was made vice president of Alpine Group, he became the architect of the organizational struggles that plagued Alpine in the first half of 2023. As team principal, he seems to continue the same culture that was so problematic before: expect immediate results without really wanting to do anything to achieve that. They have the means, they have the money, they have the drivers, but still the team is slipping backwards under his leadership.
So, how to fix this? Well, the answer is simple: Bruno Famin has to go. He seems wholly unqualified for the job, seems to have no idea on how to fix the situation, but he has been knee deep and ultimately responsible for many of the troubles that plagued the team for the past few years.
A long list of qualified replacements
From left to right, upper row: Mattia Binotto, Sébastien Philippe and Rene Rosin.
From left to right, bottom row: Mike Elliott, Philippe Sinault.
There are quite a few good candidates available to replace him. Mattia Binotto was reportedly on the shortlist of the team last year, but ultimately decided against that. F2 team principals Sébastien Philippe (ART), Sander Dorsman (MP Motorsport) and Rene Rosin (Prema) would no doubt be very willing to step up to F1. Philippe Sinault currently runs Alpine’s WEC program and got two podiums in their class last year. Jean-Marc Finot is the team principal of rival WEC team Peugeot, earning the team their first WEC podium in 2023. In that same competition, former F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi is both running and driving for the Toyota team, the reigning world champions in WEC. Sylvain Filippi became Formula E constructor champion last year with Envision Racing. And if all else fails, they could always come crawling back to Otmar Szafnauer or Cyril Abiteboul. Though I hear Guenther Steiner is also looking for a new job…
By far the best candidate in my book is Mike Elliott. He was the chief technical officer at Mercedes during their golden years of dominance. Toto Wolff described him as a fundamental pillar of the team’s success. He left last year mid-season. The assumption back then was that he was getting an early start on his gardening leave, a mandatory waiting period before you can join a new team. However, that hasn’t happened yet, which means he is still on the market. If Renault wants to improve their chances and get an experienced, technical mind at the helm of the team, they should bring in Elliott. Otherwise, we might yet again see this famous French brand say goodbye to Formula 1.