Flavio Briatore reveals 300 Alpine jobs gone in ‘spring cleaning’ at Enstone
Alpine announced the return of former team boss Flavio Briatore as an executive advisor at the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix
Alpine executive advisor Flavio Briatore has revealed the team has slimmed down its operation at Enstone this year, in a restructure that involved 300 job losses.
Briatore returned to ‘Team Enstone’ in an advisory capacity at the Spanish Grand Prix earlier this season, and significant changes have already taken place behind the scenes.
Flavio Briatore reveals significant Alpine restructure in ‘spring cleaning’ measures
Alpine endured a difficult start to the season, with the A524 beginning life as the slowest car in the field in 2024, but incremental progress has been made to bring it back to the midfield runners – with Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly scoring a double podium in Brazil to secure a huge jump on points, trebling the team’s tally in one weekend last time out.
Away from the circuit, Oliver Oakes has been brought in as team principal in place of Bruno Famin for his first role as a Formula 1 team boss, following success in the junior series with Hitech GP.
Alpine has also signalled its intentions to become a customer team from the F1 2026 season, with the constructor set to abandon its works power unit plans with Renault at its Viry-Châtillon base in France and its power unit staff to be deployed on other projects.
But regarding its UK staff at Enstone, former team boss Briatore said Alpine has restructured its workforce with around 25% of its staff having left, with the team’s headcount now at approximately 850 people, down from 1,150 beforehand.
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“This year we’ve done some spring cleaning,” Briatore told Sky Italia.
“In fact, we took a step forward on the 2024 car to concentrate on the 2025 single-seater. Unlike what others do, being forced to take a step back and then move forward, we’re moving straight forward.
“Cleaning up in the sense that we need to get back to people working for a race team and not a company. We are putting things back the way they should be.
“Alpine UK is completely independent of everything else. We’ve gone back to the Renault days – the engineers are F1 engineers, everything is focused on the team.
“Those who were going to leave have left. When we arrived, there were around 1,150 people, now there are 850.”
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