Alpine found ‘completely in the sh*t’ in Flavio Briatore’s stark reveal

His advice previously ignored by Renault CEO Luca de Meo, Flavio Briatore revealed a fresh conversation with Alpine “completely in the sh*t”, his shock Formula 1 return following.

Briatore originally left Formula 1 in disgrace following the emergence of the 2008 Singapore GP ‘Crashgate’ scandal, though has returned to the sport with Alpine, as executive advisor to De Meo, CEO of their parent company Renault.

Flavio Briatore returned after Alpine ‘in the sh*t’ assessment

Alpine has gone through a challenging year, with mass changes to their F1 personnel, while the F1 2024 campaign started with the team having one of the slowest cars on the grid.

And Briatore, speaking on the Formula For Success podcast, revealed de Meo had called him – having previously ignored his advice – to say Alpine were “completely in the sh*t”, later asking Briatore to come back, a challenge which he accepted.

Briatore was in charge for the team’s seven previous World Championship wins under the Benetton and Renault names.

“Luca de Meo, the chairman of Renault, I know Luca for much before he’s arriving in Renault,” said Briatore.

“When he arrived, I gave him some suggestions, ‘Formula 1 is a very difficult business. The people you have are not so good’. He didn’t listen, zero.

“So after three years, he’s called me, we meet, ‘I mean, we are completely in the sh*t with the team’. And I tell Luca, ‘Luca, Formula 1 is a different business. Formula 1, you need to have somebody dedicated to the team. Not be a corporate and not be bureaucracy, the team spirit, etc, etc’.

“And one day we’re talking, he told me, ‘Why don’t you come back to help me?’ And this started the conversation with Luca. I know the team, I know the factory, I know everything. So I tell [him], ‘Why not? I need to organise myself completely different, because I don’t want to go to every race. I don’t want to go live in England, maybe one day a week, etc, etc’.

“And this happened, you know, it was my old team. With this team, we won seven championships.

“And it’s the new challenge, it’s the new motivation. I’m very happy to come back.

“We have a new team principal [Oliver Oakes]. It’s Luca, myself and Oliver is team principal, and we are working like that.”

And Briatore is promising that by 2027, Alpine will be back on the Formula 1 podium.

“Alpine, I promise you, give me two years, in two years’ time we see the podium,” he said. “2027 we have a podium.”

More on the new Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes

? Explained: Who is Oliver Oakes, the rookie F1 boss Alpine has entrusted its future to?

? The Christian Horner meeting which revealed stark F1 change to Flavio Briatore

But Alpine has major business to attend to before 2027, such as determining Pierre Gasly’s team-mate for next season.

However, claiming that “only one strong driver was available”, that being Carlos Sainz who instead joined Williams, finding Gasly’s F1 2025 team-mate is not an immediate priority for Briatore, who argues that “the driver makes no difference now” for Alpine at their current level of competitiveness. Instead, he is focusing on building up all other areas of the team to unlock performance.

“I don’t know yet,” he said when asked who will be Gasly’s new team-mate.

“At this moment, the driver is not… At the moment, you need to put the team together from the commercial side, the technical side, the management side. The driver makes no difference now. The difference in 2026, 2027, 2028, this would be the difference for the driver.

“For me, in this moment, it’s just the performance of the car. It’s just restructuring the team completely.

“The driver. If you have a good car, you need a good driver. If the car is not performing… Our point in this moment [is to] make sure we put all the energy in the technical side and make sure that the car of Alpine is looking better, better and better and improving for next year. And 2026, I believe, we see the new Alpine.”

Alpine sit P8 in the current F1 2024 Constructors’ Championship standings with 11 points on the board.

Read next: Fernando Alonso reveals his post-F1 ‘wishlist’ with full career goals set