Rumor: Andretti-Cadillac to buy Alpine F1 team? (Update)

Alpine Motorsport’s Vice President Bruno Famin insists that the team is not for sale. He believes that Formula 1 offers enough leverage to brand Alpine to advertise itself.

Good luck with that.

“We have a fascinating project with Alpine. The real project is developing the Alpine, supported by the Alpine F1 team, the endurance project, so we are totally focused on that one. It’s really part of the Alpine project.

“The more successful we will be in Formula 1, the better it will be for the brand, for sure.

“As it has always been, with all my experience in motorsport, the story is the same, to justify a motorsport program, you need to explain to the big boss that it’s the equivalent to advertising.

“The difference with Alpine is that Alpine has the sport in its heart, it’s more natural, and it’s really the challenge of developing the brand directly, and it’s really the strategy of the brand to develop it through motorsport.”

The latest rumor coming out of the Belgian GP paddock says that Andretti-Cadillac may be buying into, or maybe, the entire Alpine F1 team.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Andretti-Cadillac has applied to the FIA to appear on the Formula 1 grid with its own team from 2025, and we expected an announcement during the F1 summer break.

We still do.

Tens of millions have already been invested in the project, but the application is meeting a lot of resistance and the construction of Andretti’s new facility in Fishers, Indiana is still halted due to a lawsuit.

Owner Liberty Media are not eager for more racing teams, and F1 teams also have concerns.

Stefano Domenicali, Toto Wolff and most of the existing F1 teams owners want Andretti to buy an existing team, which Andretti was not against.  However, until now, none were for sale, Andretti said.

So the Americans are now said to be in the process of taking Alpine over.

Alpine’s performance in Formula 1 is not satisfactory, which means it is currently just costing money rather than making money.

Alpine car sales in 2022 and 2023 have been pathetic, so how do they justify an Alpine team in the top form of motorsports in the world?

Answer – you team up with Cadillac and sell Alpine cars at Cadillac dealerships.

For Andretti-Cadillac, a takeover would be good news as it would allow them to develop their own chassis using Alpine’s French facilities, something that would not be possible given the lack of F1 talent in the USA.

Andretti already signed a deal with Cadillac to badge the Renault engine, at least for 2025 and 2026.

Cadillac has said they would run with Renault engines to start, but were seriously considering doing their own engine starting in 2027.

Our Take

If this rumor turns out to be true, this would be the best thing that could happen to Michael Andretti and his F1 efforts.  Starting a team from scratch would mean zero wins for a very long time.

Buying the Alpine team would see potential wins much sooner.

We know Andretti really wanted it to be a USA based all-American team.

While that was noble of him, was it realistic vs. buying an existing team?

We think not.

Interestingly, 24 percent of Alpine shares were already sold last month to a group of investors (Otro Capital, RedBird Capital Partners and Maximum Effort Investments-Actor Ryan Reynolds) for around $200 million. So a quarter of French Alpine is now already American owned.

Related News

Another leading F1 entry – Hitech GP face allegations that Russian oligarch Dmitry Mazepin is found to be secretly financing the team, which could see their application to enter Formula 1 rejected.

The suggestion that Mazepin, who sponsored Haas through his Uralkali company in 2021, is backing the Hitech GP project comes from suspicious teams – as reported by AMuS.

The teams allege that Vladimir Kim, who recently bought a 25 percent stake in the project, is actually being funded by Mazepin – who is banned from competing in F1 due to European Union sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The business magnate is closely associated with Vladimir Putin and had meetings with the Russian President prior to the outbreak of war, and in response faced sanctions due to the association.

The oligarch would likely be trying to buy entry into the sport back for his son, Nikita Mazepin.

The European high court has already ruled that Mazepin is now allowed to race in F1.