F1
Briatore sets the record straight on the future ofAlpine : “De Meo never wants to sell the team”
© Florent Gooden / DPPI
The record plays in a loop and the speeches are the same, week after week. Over the course of a very, very long season for Alpine with setbacks on and off the track, the sales rumors are incessant, as are the denials. After Luca de Meo last June, it's Flavio Briatore's turn to clarify things, once again, regarding the future of A fléché and the group Renault en Formula 1.
“It’s not for sale., answer the new executive advisor of the French team when asked if he was preparing to sell the stable, Reuters reports. Something is very clear: Luca de Meo (general director of the Renault group) never wants to sell the team. Finito question. »
“The list of bad managers [ofAlpine] is quite long »
Faced with the repeated poor performances ofAlpine with its creation, the A524, and the multiple changes of direction made over the past three years, the rumor of a departure from the French manufacturer in the form of a sale of the team emerged and gained momentum over the weeks. The planned – but not yet formalized – abandonment of the Renault engine in 2026 for the engine Mercedes came to fuel these rumors, but the A arrow sticks to his position: the team is not for sale, regardless of the current situation.
This summer, Alpine has once again seen its organization chart shaken up with the departure of Bruno Famin and the arrival of Oliver Oakes, new Team Principal of the French team. A choice made jointly between Flavio Briatore and Luca de Meo and assumed by the Italian troublemaker, who notably points to the succession of bad managers at the head of the team Alpine for several years.
“Ollie is enthusiastic, young, ambitious: that’s what we need. To turn this team around, we need young people, people who are passionate about their work, he specifies in reference to the British leader, only 36 years old and the youngest team principal since Christian Horner in 2005. At some point, a few bad managers were chosen, and I think the list of bad managers is quite long. (…) People understand good [managers], not bad ones. People need to understand what's going on in the factory, what's going on in the race. He doesn't have the experience of a big team like this, but he has the talent to succeed. »
Oakes sees huge potential at Enstone
« enstone has something that money can't buy: a racing spirit, a history, underlines Oliver Oakes, new boss of the team Alpine. You can't help but go around [the factory] and find that something that instills enormous passion to make this place what it should be. I dare say that it was poorly managed for several years, and I think it is easy to point the blame. (…) But I think we really need to focus again on the competition and I think we have extraordinary people. It's not their fault, it's the fault of the leaders before. »
With the question of the second driver settled for 2025, with the promotion of Jack Doohan to a starting role alongside Pierre Gasly, Alpine can truly turn its attention towards 2026 and the arrival of new technical regulations. A year and a half to get back on track and restructure a more than fragile team.
“If we all do a good job, we will move forward. It drives me a little crazy that today, in F1, everyone gives long speeches, talking about X number of races [to progress], which is a little painful to hear, annoys Oliver Oakes, preferring action to words. We just have to build a good car and a good team. Ultimately, the results will speak for themselves. »
ALSO READ > “A new version ofAlpine » will emerge in 2026, says Flavio Briatore
Dorian Grangier
A young journalist nostalgic for the motorsport of yesteryear. Raised on the exploits of Sébastien Loeb and Fernando Alonso.
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Lara Droeshaut
25/08/2024 at 05:41 a.m.
Incredible, taking someone who cheated fifteen years ago in this same stable as an exclusive advisor but finally Mr de Meo you are serious!!!! But if everything is very clear, they will destroy our technological tools and will cause other victims elsewhere, already it is very limited to put a foreigner at the head of the Renault group, we do not have enough French managers!! !!! And the state (the “Macron” government still holds), says and does nothing, the state and still shareholders of the group. Yet another technological tool which will disappear one more, in ten years we will no longer know how to manufacture anything, we will only be buyers at high cost from abroad and we will become dependent on other nations and at their will. to sell to the highest bidder (latest example, masks and disinfectant products during the pandemic).
dedeHJ37
25/08/2024 at 08:08 a.m.
with De Meo and the aging playboy thug Briatore the team will disappear and will certainly be sold to Andretti who is just waiting for it, Liberty Media is in charge behind this whole circus!!! don't ever call me Fra again
ALBERT Claude
24/08/2024 at 07:37 a.m.
Questioning previous managementAlpine F1 is also and above all putting Renault's senior management on trial for years, who have made numerous mistakes: Insufficient renovation of Enstone after the purchase of Lotus from the vulture G.Lopez (who obviously had not invested a penny in this area), aging of engineering, Equally insufficient investment in the development and R&D of the first hybrid F1 engine, with the long-term consequence of the divorce from Red Bull and the subsequent departure of Abitboul, absence of a real replacement at the head of the "engine" department of Rémy Taffin, who left for Oreca, etc. De Méo on arriving had to break everything and develop the "sports vehicles" branch of the Renault group with Alpine : Fine, but it is, for the moment, a new failure The choice of a corporalist and incompetent manager (Rossi) who has caused a lot of damage in a very short time, it is him like to go looking for such a guy sulphurous than Briatore, who logically should have been banned from any activity in F1 This lack of anticipation and the non-choices made over the past 10 years, the aberrant choices of the current CEO have more responsibility for the current problems than the personality and the skills of Abitboul, Szafnauer and Famin De Méo was rather successful in his first 2 years at the head of the Renault group and therefore risks persisting in his sporting policy until the moment... and Briatore has no credibility when he says " Alpine is not for sale": After such a massacre, it will take years to reassemble an F1 team, even with a German engine..
Yves-Henri RANDIER
24/08/2024 at 05:34 a.m.
“To turn this team around, we need young people, people who are passionate about their work” ... how old is the king of cheats, Il Magnifico Flavio? 74 years old, the hospital that makes fun of charity! And what's more, it's all the fault of the previous managers who were necessarily bad at justifying the current situation as well as the one which could unfortunately continue until the end of the 2024 season. To proclaim such words so loud and clear, what sincerity can there be? when we know the past (oops... the past!) of the man who still presents himself as a magician of F1, a "sport business" which has evolved significantly since his glorious Benetton epic?