Last week, Alpine officially signed our Aussie Jack Doohan as a full-time driver to the replace the Haas-bound Esteban Ocon next season alongside Frenchman Pierre Gasly. But we still don’t know what’s going to happen beyond 2025 when the new engine regulations come in and Renault – who manages Alpine – still wishes to abandon their engine project to cut costs, so they can use Mercedes as one of their privateer teams rather than continue being a fully fledged factory team.
If they really wanted to be a customer team, it’s going to be weird when a big car company like Renault via Alpine makes their own sports cars on the road but not for Formula 1 as if they’re running Lotus or Aston Martin.
I don’t recall a single thing about Alpine working with Mercedes on a road car project before. Although they’ve did work with Caterham and Lotus for a brief time before, but then neither of those joint venture projects came out because there’s less competition to produce and get back in this small sports car market.
What Renault should’ve done is to just sell off Alpine to Andretti if they didn’t really want to run a team that isn’t their own engine. However, we still don’t know when they will finally admit that they can no longer run a Formula 1 team should they become a customer team to Mercedes.
As it stands for now, they are not keen on selling even it’s for a billion dollars when Formula 1 currently enjoys running 10 teams to maximise & protect its financial value rather than thinking anything expansion to let Andretti-GM in.
All we can hope for Renault is to get a supportive OEM partner to help finish off the project like IImor or Mecachrome in the hope of closing their rivals upfront by competing for regular podiums and victories again. If not, they can finish this off by themselves in-house if they really want to for the best of Renault given their long history of racing in Formula One.
That will be a huge ask though as hoping Alpine doesn’t succumb to its complete collapse at some point and Jack would then have to find another ride or at least admit they can’t compete in Formula 1 anymore, and a new team like Andretti or Hitech can come take over Team Enstone where this place was the home to many World Championships back in the 90s and early-mid 00s.
