Formula 1 News: Should Alpine sell floundering team to Andretti? (2nd Update)

Former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan has blasted the Alpine F1 team for the way it has been managing its staff, its cars, and its drivers.

Suggesting strong views about Alpine and its future, Jordan explained on the Formula For Success podcast:

“I think they got rid of Otmar prematurely. I think that was a mistake.

“I think he’s a talented person who certainly knew how to keep that team in the right direction and the results that they had very soon after they let him go were indicative of where somebody had left a platform of a style of management that they could embrace.

“At the moment, they are the most floundering team. It is absolutely embarrassing. I find it embarrassing to watch.

“Gasly and Ocon are capable of winning races. With Alpine in the current vision, do I see them there next year? Absolutely not. Not a chance.

“I think it’s wide open for a sale. I think Renault have pulled back from it. They don’t want to spend the money on the engines and the engine for 2026 is such a big outlay in terms of development or cost, it’s frightening them even though the value of the team [is high]. They all talk about a billion pounds for a team.

“I just feel that Alpine have been disgraceful in terms of not being able to perform for their drivers, for their team.

“To give them that car for which to compete in a World Championship is just unacceptable. Unacceptable.

“I wouldn’t put up with it. It’s shocking.”

There are rumblings that Luca de Meo, CEO of Renault, is considering selling the Alpine F1 team but keeping the F1 engine business.

–Update by Mark Cipolloni–

The Alpine team designs and builds their cars in Enstone, Oxfordshire, England while the engines are designed and built in Viry-Châtillon, France, not too far from Renault’s main headquarters in Boulogne-Billancourt, Île-de-France

The Enstone facility has its roots back in the Benetton F1 team days in the early 1990s. It has since been upgraded extensively. Through the Benetton and Renault eras it had been upgraded piecemeal, but more recently Renault has made a major investment in the facility. The facility is located in a fabulous place in the middle of the Oxfordshire countryside.

If Andretti were able to buy the Alpine team, there is a possibility that Andretti could take over the Enstone facility, or move all the staff to a new facility near the Silverstone circuit, which is not too far from Enstone.

What is interesting about this possibility is the fact that some big name Americans are already invested in the team. They expect results they are not seeing so far.

Back in June 2023, 24% of the team’s shares were sold to an investment group including Otro Capital, RedBird Capital Partners and Maximum Effort Investments.

Actors Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney and Michael B. Jordan were part of the team’s first wave of investment on behalf of Otro Capital back in June who now own 24% of Alpine. They’ve since been joined by a number of high profile sports stars in mid-October.

List of notable Alpine investors 

• Ryan Reynolds – Canadian and American actor, producer and businessman
• Rob McElhenney – American actor, writer, producer, podcaster and businessman
• Michael B. Jordan – American actor and businessman
• Rory McIlroy – Four-time golf major winner
• Patrick Mahomes – American 3x NFL Super Bowl champion
• Travis Kelce – American 3x NFL Super Bowl champion
• Anthony Joshua – Two-time former unified world heavyweight champion
• Trent Alexander-Arnold – Champions League and Premier League winner with Liverpool
• Juan Mata – 2010 World Cup winner with Spain and former Chelsea and Manchester United star
• Alexander Zverev – Former world No. 2 tennis star

Combining the Andretti name with these big sports names would make landing sponsorship a no-brainer.

However, their 24% ownership could complicate a sale to Andretti, if Andretti and his investors want 100% ownership. They invested around $220 million in the team to get 24%.

Doing the math, that puts the team value to purchase 100% at around $1 billion.

If Andretti were to purchase just Alpine’s 76% he and his investors would have to fork over at least $0.76 billion and likely have to agree to retain the existing employees for a minimum period of time.

$760 million versus paying $600 million for an F1 entry fee as a new team starting from scratch.  It seems like a no-brainer decision to us.

Andretti could agree to run the team using customer Renault engines until 2028 when the Cadillac engine would be ready.  Or Renault and Cadillac could decide to do a joint engine together.

(GMM) Questions are now being asked about how long Alpine will maintain the support of Renault and should they sell to Andretti.

In Bahrain, the stark reality of Alpine’s situation with its woeful 2024 car became clear.

“There are the top four teams, then Aston Martin, the rest and then Alpine,” new Haas team boss Ayao Komatsu told Ekstra Bladet after the season opener.

Last year, amid Alpine’s exodus of top staff, a quarter of the team was sold by Renault by investors – with some celebrities as the public face of the deal. It valued the team at about 800 million euros.

Still, the prospects for 2024 didn’t look great, also because the Renault engine – not used by a single customer team, thereby exacerbating the costs – is believed to be as much as half a second per lap behind every rival.

It was even rumored that Alpine, ostensibly Renault’s works team, could switch to customer Mercedes power.

“Then I had to explain that without Renault engines there would no longer be a project, nor the chassis factory in Enstone,” team boss Bruno Famin told Auto Bild.

A disconsolate Pierre Gasly explains that Alpine also has bigger problems than mere lagging pace – like notably slow pitstops.

“Unfortunately we know it’s something we need to work on. Today it cost me 10 seconds,” he had said after Saturday’s Bahrain GP. “We know that it wouldn’t have given us any points, but in the future it will be important when we get closer to points again.”

And this weekend in Saudi Arabia, the performance situation is also likely to be woeful.

“We will not have any developments in Jeddah,” Gasly reported. “But we have to learn a lot of things about this new car. There are things to refine.

“After that, there will be no revolution and we will have to continue working step by step.”

Some might argue that swooping on the dire Alpine situation might now be the perfect opportunity for Andretti-Cadillac to enter F1 even without the sport’s blessing to become an eleventh team.

Related Article: So what are Andretti’s Options now?

Indeed, if Andretti simply waits until 2028, as per F1’s suggestion, a new Concorde Agreement is likely to demand a ballooned $600m or more simply to become the eleventh team – on top of all the infrastructure costs of starting from scratch.

“Formula 1 made its position clear,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner told reporters. “But it doesn’t mean that Andretti can’t come. It just means that they can’t come as a new or eleventh team.

“The opportunity still exists for them to take over an existing franchise or team, if they can reach commercial terms.”