F1: Alpine and his spines road until he reaches 2025 with Franco Colapinto
The last ten seasons of the French team, before under the denomination Renault, were tortuous and with results that were far from expected.
Renault debuted as a comprehensive Formula 1 team in the GR Britain of 1977 with Jean-Pierre Jabouille at the RS01 steering wheel. The premiere of the Rombo brand closed with abandonment for a turbo failure. Since then, he lived moments of success, lean results, absences and returns and even name change. That beginning of the 70s of the last century was cut in 1985, when the French house closed its program. The return was in 2002, after buying Benetton, and would live its most glorious moments.
With Flavio Briatore as team director, since he already held with Benetton, Renault celebrated two pilot titles with Fernando Alonso in 2005 and 2006, seasons in which the rhombus was also consecrated in builders. The successful period was stained by one of the greatest scandals in the history of F1: In Singapore 2008, Briatore ordered Nelsinho Piquet to collide with a wall to help Alonso’s strategy. The Italian trap dirty Renault and the FIA condemned the Piedmontés for life, although the intervention of an ordinary court reduced the penalty to just a couple of years. The damage was done and Renault decided to leave the category in December 2011 by selling the shares to Genni Capital, which put Lotus on the track.
In 2015, with Carlos Ghosn at the head as CEO of Renault and Nissan, the French house replied Lotus and undertook an ambitious project to return to F1 since 2016. “We will need three years to be competitive,” Ghosn said. When the period raised, The Brazilian Pope fell prisoner in Japan, in November 2018, for fiscal fraud and improper appropriation of funds. After paying a bail of 4.5 million dollars, he got the house prison. Although he opted for a drastic measure: he escaped. Ghosn starred in a Hollywood escape from Japan and was exiled in Lebanon, a country of which he had nationality. Even today it is still a fugitive.
Renault put his chest to the situation and Cyril Abiteboul, who had the position of director of the F1 team, faced the facts. That idea of Ghosn will be competitive after three years was to be fulfilled. Although in 2018, Estone’s team finished fourth in builders, yes, without even having achieved a podium. In 2020, the pandemic season, three podiums arrived: Eifel, Emilia-Romagna and Sakhir, the only ones since the return of 2016. For the end of 2020, already under the command of Luca de Meo, the rhombus made the decision to change the name of all its sports programs in the world and call them Alpine, the Renault sports brand.
In 2021, already as Alpine, the team’s objectives were to consolidate in the middle zone and approach Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. He was no longer as ambitious as in Ghosn times. But it would not happen either. Of course, Esteban Ocon would achieve the triumph in the chaotic GP of Hungary of 2021, the first victory for the French since Japan 2008 (with Alonso). But the goals were not fulfilled. By 2023 they pointed to fourth place in builders, but they were barely sixth, the same place where they ended in 2024, thanks to the double podium achieved in San Pablo.
Last year’s good closure excited Alpine with the idea of fighting with Williams for the fifth position of 2025. For now, after six dates, he is ninth, just ahead of Sauber. From the next appointment, the GP of Emilia-Romagna, Franco Colapinto will join as a starter to accompany Pierre Gasly.
In short, Since the last return, in 2016, the Estone team achieved just a victory and nine podiums in 196 great awards. The lack of results led Briatore to the drastic decision to dispense with their own engines from 2026. The rhombus has a perfect presence on the grill as a supplier of drivers since 2001, but in this hybrid era it was very far away in terms of power. With the new technical regulation that will be released in the next season, Alpine will turn pushed by Mercedes. Meanwhile, with Colapinto y Gasly, a pair that will be at least for five races, will seek to get into the points.
