Briatore back in alpine advisory role; sainz moves into frame for 2025 seat

FORMULA 1

Alpine has formally given ex-Benetton and Renault Formula 1 team boss Flavio Briatore an advisory role, 14 years after he resigned for his part in the Singapore Grand Prix crash scandal.

Following weeks of speculation that Alpine was sounding out Briatore about a role in the squad as it evaluates its F1 future, the French manufacturer confirmed at last weekend’s Spanish GP that the Italian “will predominantly focus on top-level areas of the team including scouting top talents and providing insights on the driver market, challenging the existing project by assessing the current structure and advising on some strategic matters within the sport”.

While Briatore helped steer the Benetton and Renault teams to world title success with Michael Schumacher in 1994-95 and Fernando Alonso in 2005-06, his tenure at the squad ended in one of F1’s biggest controversies. He was initially given a lifetime ban by the FIA for his role in the crash scandal, in which he was implicated in a plot that involved Nelson Piquet Jr deliberately crashing early in the race to trigger a safety car that helped his teammate Alonso win. Briatore managed to overturn the ban in the French Tribunal de Grande Instance in 2010, and continued to keep an involvement in F1. He remains part of Alonso’s management team, and also played a role in various commercial deals.

Briatore’s appointment to Alpine comes at an interesting point in the team’s history, as it ponders abandoning its position as a manufacturer squad and becoming a customer operation from 2026. It is understood that Renault CEO Luca de Meo, to whom Briatore will report, is evaluating whether the huge investment needed for Renault to produce its own engine is worth it, considering the success that customer teams can enjoy in F1. Alpine looks most likely to secure a customer engine from Mercedes if it was to go down that route.

While de Meo has commanded a large number of senior personnel changes over the past 12 months since the dismissal of previous team boss Otmar Szafnauer, Briatore’s appointment is seen as the most eyebrow-raising so far. But team principal Bruno Famin shrugged off questions about Briatore’s past in Spain. “I don’t really mind about the past, I’m always looking [at] the future, what we can do to get our team better,” Famin said when quizzed on the subject. “Flavio has 40