Before his return to Formula 1 in June last year as an executive adviser to Alpine, Flavio Briatore made a vow to Luca de Meo, the chief executive of the Renault Group.
“I promised Luca that in two, three years, the team would be on the podium, or very close to the podium,” Briatore said in an interview in May. “That was only nine months ago.”
To de Meo and Renault, Alpine is the family jewel, and Briatore, 75, is charged with restoring the team’s luster.
Alongside his role as adviser, as of May 6, the team said in a statement, he is “covering the duties” of team principal after Oliver Oakes resigned after about nine months. He left days after his brother, William, a fellow director of the single-seater team Hitech Grand Prix, was charged with “transferring criminal property.”
“I’d been in contact with Luca,” Briatore said about his initial return to the team. “One day we were talking, and he was desperate because the team was last in the table,” referring to the constructors’ championship.
“I said to him that under the right conditions, then maybe I’d come back to help, just as a consultant, for six or seven Grands Prix, nothing like the role is now,” he added. “It was something completely different to what it is now.”
After 14 years out of Formula 1, Briatore, who had vowed to never return, indeed came back. He had been banned from the sport when he was the team principal of Renault because of the “Crashgate” scandal, in which the Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr. deliberately crashed at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to bring out a safety car that would help his teammate, Fernando Alonso, win the race. The ban was eventually overturned by a French court.
“I had possibilities to come back immediately, but they weren’t right,” Briatore said. “I wanted to stop anyway, maybe not in that way, but it was time to finish. I’d won seven championships, and Formula 1 is very demanding.”
As team principal of Benetton, Briatore guided Michael Schumacher to the first two of his seven drivers’ titles in 1994 and 1995. The team won the constructors’ championship in 1995.
In 2005 and 2006, with Renault, Briatore led Alonso and the team to the drivers’ and constructors’ championships.
After leaving Formula 1, Briatore, an Italian entrepreneur, focused on his businesses in the food and beverage industry. He said he had had “one or two proposals” to return, but “nothing very exciting” until his conversations with de Meo.
Briatore is back with the team for the third time. “In a few months, we have done a lot for the organization,” he said. “We’ve changed the commercial side, the marketing side, and we’ve brought in two or three very important sponsors.
“We’ve changed a lot of people on the technical side. I would say the team is now 85 percent complete. We’re still missing key people to make us stronger next year, but I know who they are.”
Briatore also needs a team principal now that Oakes has left. London’s Metropolitan Police said William Oakes was arrested “in the Silverstone Park area,” about two hours northwest of London. Hitech’s base is at Silverstone Park, which is close to the site of the British Grand Prix circuit. Oliver Oakes holds majority control of the company.
Hitech Grand Prix is a single-seater team competing in junior racing categories, including Formula 2, Formula 3 and F1 Academy.
In a statement, Oakes said: “It is a personal decision for me to step down. Flavio has been like a father to me, nothing but supportive since I took the role, as well as giving me the opportunity.”
Briatore said that the mood inside the team had changed since his arrival as adviser and that the people were more motivated. “The only thing missing is the result,” he said. “This year’s car is good. We just need to try to take everything possible from it to help the driver.”
After six Grands Prix, Alpine has scored points once, a seventh place from Pierre Gasly in Bahrain, and is ninth in the constructors’ championship.
Gasly said Briatore had “brought a lot of good to the team.”
“Formula 1 is not a sport where things change over two, three months,” he said. “We need time, but he is clearly pushing everybody in the right direction, in a very impressive way, trying to get the maximum out of every department, and trying hard to put the team in a better place.
“He’s come with a lot of experience, a lot of network, someone who makes changes. Sometimes you have to be pushed and challenged, and that’s what he does all the time.”
The team made a major change right after Oakes left. The driver Jack Doohan was dropped on May 7 after the Miami Grand Prix. Franco Colapinto, one of the test and reserve drivers, was promoted.
Briatore signed Colapinto, of Argentina, over the winter on a loan from Williams, with whom he competed in nine Grands Prix last season. He scored points in two races, but crashed in three events.
Colapinto will be evaluated over the next five races, Briatore said. “With the field being so closely matched this year, and with a competitive car, which the team has drastically improved in the past 12 months, we are in a position where we see the need to rotate our lineup,” he said.
“We also know the 2026 season will be an important one for the team, and having a complete and fair assessment of the drivers this season is the right thing to do to maximize our ambitions next year.”
Before the Miami Grand Prix, Doohan said Briatore was “doing an exceptional job for the team.”
“He’s tried to give us a car that we can perform in, doing everything in his power to make sure that we can get Alpine back to the front and make us as competitive as possible,” Doohan said.
“We know in this sport that can’t happen overnight,” he added. “There’s obviously a combination of factors that go into putting this car all together, some of it is out of our control. There’s only so much that we, as drivers, can do and that he can do.”
Doohan, who retired after a collision with Liam Lawson of Racing Bulls, on the first lap of the race in Miami, said Briatore was “an icon” and “someone I’ve looked up to for a very, very long time.”
“I love his brutal, to-the-point nature,” he said, adding there’s “no mucking around.” “You find out what’s going on very, very quickly. “
Briatore agreed. “You need to tell the truth,” he said. “I don’t have time to massage people’s egos, so I’m very straight with everybody.
“I don’t go behind people’s backs. It’s wrong if somebody has done a bad job” but is still praised, he said. “No politics. Not in my team. This is most important.”
Doohan will remain with Alpine as a test and reserve driver through the evaluation period ahead of 2026, when the team changes its engine supplier.
That means Renault will not be involved in Formula 1 for the first time since 1988. Alpine will use Mercedes power units in 2026.
“It was a very hard decision,” Briatore said. “But if you want to compete at the highest level, whatever your business, you need to be at the same pace as everybody else.
“For the team to compete for victories, for the possibility of becoming world champions, this was a decision we absolutely needed to take.”
In the team’s various guises over the years, as Renault, Lotus and Alpine, it has not been champion since 2006. In 96 Grands Prix since the team rebranded as Alpine in 2021, it has won one race and scored five additional podium finishes.
Briatore said that with the changes being made, it would be champion again: “Why not? Sure. If you see the teams in front of us, they’re nothing special. It’s only people, more committed, less distracted.
“It has not been easy at this team. Hiring people, firing people, no order, no direction, nothing. Everybody was in charge, nobody was in charge. We lost a lot of good people, but now, little by little, they are coming back to us.”
