The Embarrassing Downfall of the Alpine F1 Team
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- Опубликовано: 6 мар 2024
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So much for that "100 race project" right. Alpine are in the absolute mud right now, and for a manufacturer with such a rich history in motorsport - it's embarrassing. Let's talk about it.
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The amount of highly regarded staff being let go/ wanting to leave just shows its a toxic and delusional overseeing management in control.
You don't have that much turnover if there's not serious problems up top.
And next year they will be purchased by some crypto NFT scam or a small endowed Saudi Prince
They are forced resignations
Normal French behaviour.
How Rossi still has a job is beyond me.
He must have some serious dirt on people.
Wanted to be the French Ferrari
Ended up as the French Haas
Alpain 😅
Le-Haas
Worse. The French Jaguar. The French Toyota. Because it's the same phenomenon as those two: a major manufacturer thinking it can run an F1 team better than lifelong F1 people. It never works.
Oh it’s more like Prost-Peugeot from 1998-2000. Poor pace, horrendous unreliability and internal power struggles.
If Alpine & HAAS had the same amount of money and resources, HAAS would obliterate them 😂
You didn’t even mention Alain Prost!!! He left, giving it both barrels!!! And de Meo was the target!
🤦
I thought Laurent Rossi was the target.
Dogging Alain was criminal.
When Alain Prost said he had heard many times at Renault HQ that F1 'was a simple sport that could be easily managed from home', I knew they were never going to win anything. At the end of last year, I predicted they'd fall behind Williams and Sauber in 2-3 years. I was wrong, it seems it'll be in less than 1 year.
Damn… that is a pretty damning incitement of Alpine. Just goes to show that Alpine’s problems are the ownership. Just as I suspected
Damn, that's pretty brazy.
so much for your prediction!
Well, I guess it was less than 100 races -or was it the Five Year Plan, doesn't really matter now. I guess Otmar wasn't the problem?
@@TommoOnRUclips
Tf brazy? What kind of stupid sounding word is this?😂
RIP Ryan Renault's investment
Ryan Dacia :(
Rename it to Dacia F1
@@daphneschuring5810Make James May the team principal
Minty F1
Bring back the Yellow and Blue Renault
Oscar Piastry dodged the biggest bullet of his life
Alonso too, for the first time ever lol
Mark Webber's crystal ball
And after losing both the prospect of Alonso and Piatri, they ended up with 2 French drivers who loathes each other
😄😁😆😅
@@nhancao4790tbf everyone seems to hate ocon.
As others have commented when a manufacturer gives a world champion like Alain Prost (and former team owner) the opportunity to help shape a team in a consulting role and he chooses to walk once he sees behind the curtain that tells you everything you need to know. When Merc gave Niki Lauda the same opportunity he gave years of his support and expertise and experience to the team.
Absolutely. I genuinely can't believe I completely forgot about Alain Prost. That says A LOT. 😅
Remember in 2021/22 when el plan was in full swing
Doesn’t seem to be working…
It has become L Plan now
@@leonand42 turned into Lpine real quick
It was - and then it wasn't.
El Plan was jump ship for Alonso
Le plan
It's a shame seeing alpine fall because they had/have crazy potential but they've become soulless since the renault to alpine rebranding
Bro, the Renault F1 team is dead since the end of 2006. After that the only time that they where near to the top of the grid was back when they became Lotus F1 and only last until 2013. After that they went back to the midfield. They never where a competent Team and they will never be until Renault left. The biggest problem Renault himself
The danger of the word "potential" eh.
Renault had one of the best development centers for Formula one, but it was simply too cost intensive. And when they partnered up with Red Bull they didnt get any credit for the championship wins. But everybody bashed on them when they had a bad start with the new turbo era. So they pulled the plug... When they decided to go back to F1 they had a significant smaller budget and therefor, in order to avoid bashing for the Renault brand, they rebranded the team into Alpine, since they needed to get that brand more popular anyway. You cant expect them to win Formula one against the crazy budgets that come from Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
I remember Adrian Newey gave an interview on Beyond The Grid where RBR had a meeting with the Renault board around 2014/15. He said they encouraged Renault to boost their budget and resources to improve what was a hopeless engine but came out of the meeting depressed when then-CEO Carlos Ghosn said "I have no interest in F1, I'm only in it because my marketing people say I should be".
That brutally honest statement is laced within every inch of the Renault hierarchy. This is where they are today because of that attitude.
Sacking Cyril wasn't a good move. It was definitely not his fault that they finished 5th in 2020. The 3-5th race was pretty much decided by the drivers and Esteban just wasn't on Daniel's level
I thought Cyril did a really good job. He played the media well - from an outside POV anyway he was decent.
@@TommoOnRUclips I agree 100%
they finished 4th in 2020
@@francisanatriello9815 Nope, they were 5th
@@swampthing94 oh yeah, i forgot the pink mercedes
"This engine has to cook!" 19:10
To be fair their current engines do cook every other race, literally
Wrong kinda cooking.
and apparently their gearboxes too
Roasting the engine.
The team morale looked awful in the Netflix episodes, especially when Bruno came in... and he's not exactly Mr Motivator. Alpine need a James Vowles type character to step in and really shake things up and re-energise the team. I knew the moment I saw Bruno talking to the team in Endstone it wasn't going to work out. He just doesn't give that inspiration or drive that the team needs.
Having a team leader with that media savvy approach - it's important. Not the most important thing of course, but it helps Vowles is good with that stuff. It inspires confidence.
Endstone's only chance is to find a leader that sets up a friendly "us against corporate" rivalry and then shield the whole factory from any contact with Renault executives and their de-motivating statements and plans. But that is a really exhausting role on top of all the other responsibilities of a team boss.
You made me think that they should get Horner if he's sacked by RB...
@@miguellromaoHorner going to Alpine would be peak comedy. Especially considering the history between RB and Renault
@@Tom-rt2 Crazier things have happened in F1 History
We don't Believe Andretti will be competitive enough, however we believe Alpine are competitive with no team at all💀
If they get the Honda engine that would be a winning car.
Tbh the way Honda keep coming in and out of f1 , idk if pairing up with what appears to be the most unstable team is going to work. Gives me 2015/16 Mclaren Honda vibes but at the same time I don't think they can be worse than they currently are.@@timmanto1022
Proves the point that having big theoretical resources, does not guarantee anything.
I am strongly convinced the FIA just didn’t want a second American team
Andretti is a well respected racing team stateside and while they’d probably not win for a long time would build the team up pretty quickly
Them being rejected made absolutely zero sense
@@phxmaster9684 Haas is an american team by name only, almost 100% operates in Europe.
When I thought that the French Revolution would start at the moment Alpine signed Gasly, I was wrong. It was when they took out their Louis XIV in Otmar Szaufner. Then the rest of the staff has been replaced by the Jacobins.
Otmar looking better and better over time.
And he's right, having the fear of losing your job at any moment is such unneeded stress.
Reassure your people that you will not lose your job because of some rough times.
Go back to Renault or sell it to Andretti. This Alpine experiment has been nothing short of an embarrassment.
Alpine Is just the name
Embarrassing is the perfect word
no it's way more than just a name. For starters... Appart from F1 fans, who understands, that Alpine is renault and not just another Brand? @@massimodegrazia2192
I lay a majority of blame at Laurent Rossi's doorstep. He comes across as rude and arrogant, and not somebody I'd want to work for. Definitely a "stick" rather than "carrot" management style.
It's so funny to think that even a Lotus team in the early 2010's, had better engineering, aero and power mechanics that actually won races while still going broke vs what Renault/Alpine do. That lotus team highlights how narrow the profit margins used to be. But nowadays? I'm just amazed by how pathetic Alpine/Renault still are, despite in an era were F1 finally found a bigger market. They should be gone by next season but they won't, so I expect another rebranding soon for Renault.
Alain Prost said how poorly he thought of management. I think he was specifically referring to Laurent Rossi who wanted to take all the credit for himself or something.
Also in the end of year photo in 2021, Marcin had his middle finger stuck out. Things certainly weren't good at that team.
Alpine very clearly have a classic big brand manufacturer culture problem: Upper management constantly meddling with the team structure and doing their utmost to mismanage every critical decision in innovative new ways. It's the Toyota story all over again, just presented in French colours.
Except toypta spent the $$
The irony with the Andretti rejection is so real rn
😬😬😬
So now Alpine has a top-heavy management structure to go along with its top-heavy car, lol.
Is the Triad Organizational concept a nod to McLaren or, hear me out, the innovative Peugeot revitalization committee: Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond with little Moustaches? 😂
Oui oui UN COM FOR TAR BLEE
What a fuckin' reference
Main driver wears All-white, right?
I just wish they would stop faffing around with having 16 million different bosses for each employee. That’s the main advantage that teams like Williams have: They have a clear singular leader at the top that is able to delegate other jobs to more proficient people. Then he’s still able to do things like pulling an all-nighter with the crew building the carbon-floors for the cars. That’s a great example of leadership. Alpine don’t have that and haven’t had that since Briatore left.
Also, I think recency bias (and a few good cars) have actually covered up how messed up this team actually was and still is. Like I’m talking about back when it was Lotus and they basically had no money to pay their drivers (which is why Kimi left.) When Renault took over the team again, that first Renault that Palmer had to drive was really not a good car and showed just how far behind Enstone were as a team. So I do think there’s more rot than seems initially apparent. Especially because they used to love claiming that their car was “only” bad because of their engine. McLaren kinda proved that wasn’t the case.
It’s also so crazy when you look at how driven, talented and professional Alpine’s WEC team is. They’re like a completely different company. Plus, although you knocked their WEC team, they were only beaten by Ferrari, Porsche, Peugeot and Toyota. All those teams have a year+ amount of experience in Hypercar - Alpine beat both BMW and Lambo and got both cars to the end. It was solid.
When ppl CHOOSE to leave. That tells u theres a big problem internally. I take it Fernando saw it back then and so did Oscar and Chose to leave as soon as they could
And Ricciardo before that too, smart choices all around
It's not good either when a company gets rid of ppl randomly (I think it's equally god damn bad)
after cyril renault has been going downhill, he actually had believe and attempted to bring renault back to the top of f1
Explains why Daniel left aswell as prost
Remember when we thought Alonso to aston martin sounded moronic?
How foolish we were.
But it never was? It was a sideways move at worst at the time
I was one of few agreed with Piastri and Alonso's departure. I remembered the majority attacked me on Twitter.
Spent the last year working with the new COO John Woods. He's factory operations, not on the technical side, but worth a shout out as one of the nicest and most sincere guys I've ever worked with. His Mrs makes decent mince pies too.
The fact Alain Prost left kinda says everything. Niki Lauda never left Mercedes for a reason.
I’m a firm believer Marcin Budkowski was the man to lead Alpine and not Otmar. When Marcin was in charge the drivers worked together , the team had leadership and while no disrespect to Otmar I had more faith in Marcin. Yes Laurent Rossi is to blame for a lot of the team’s influence. I say this as a Alpine/Renault fan and Ocon fan but the team is hard to look at and while the lows of Ferrari are hard sometimes, the lows of Alpine have been unbearable.
How tf do they justify keeping out Andretti with Cadillac but keep these guys and Haas around? Damnit.
European Elitism
How hasn't anyone commented on 11:38.
Even though I would like Andretti to get on the F1 grid, it's starting to get funny how a lot of people are suggesting them buying/ taking over Sauber, then it was Haas, then it was Sauber again, and now it's Alpine. Whoever is struggling, there will be people saying "Andretti should totally take over that team. It makes so much sense".
There’s 2 teams I’d be happy to loose in f1, HAAS and Alpine. If they don’t improve they should make way for teams like Andretti so they can have their chance
Alpine will bounce back.
This seems to be a constant issue with Renault in F1 as a whole. They want to use the team to promote their cars, but want to put no effort into actually running a team. The c suite wants to win but doesn't have the patience to follow a proper development plan and doesn't want to maintain a proper level of investment. Changing the name to Alpine is indicative of the "1 foot in /1 foot out" mentality renault has. They will always be a middling to failing outfit until something changes at the top.
Alpine feels like a series of people coming in to clean up the messes of others. I doubt they will be able to recover any time soon. Their best opportunity to hold respect is to sell their team to Andretti and have them start all over.
I'd love to see Andretti take that facility, those people, and run with it. But I just don't see it happening to be honest.
@@TommoOnRUclipswhat if all the Hollywood sponsors leave or threaten to leave unless something drastic happens like selling the team to Andretti?
With an Andretti takeover we'd have a productive spilit between Viry, Enstone, and the couple of facilities, one being in the US, Andretti built to start its F1 project.
Even better, if the Renault group doesn't pull out before '28 Andretti will be the de facto Renault official team in F1, breaking the deal with GM.
If that's the case, I'd suggest for GM to partner with McLaren using the Chevrolet badge, this way many crybabies will stop wailing that McLaren is not backed by a Manufacturer, because many genuinely refuse to understand that 'til they'll build sportscars with an engine of their own(an old Nissan tuned by Ricardo, but that's common knoweledge by now, and maybe opens another path), no car company, even less one competing in GT classes(like Chevy is with the Corvette and the Camaro), can support them.
The Nissan engie opens anogher, more straightforward path, Renault either merging or simply shutting down its structure to have McLaren as their works team. But they simply denied their last spec PUs when McLaren was their customer, because the customer was always in front of them, so not even this easy solution seems viable.
Alpine will recover without Andretti. But as American, I 'd love Andretti purchase the team .
It’s good that at least the Renault board and their decisions are responsible for the damage to their Alpine brand this utter clusterf… of a team causes and not just poor performance from the people working at the F1 operation itself, I mean with that Enstone/Viry split and their…let’s call it communication difficulties it’s not all sunshine and rainbows at the team itself either but there definitely are a lot of highly talented people there who just deserve better than the environment the big bosses create for them
feels reminiscent (but with even more departures!) of Ford's meddling with the Jaguar team
Letting Cyril leave was the biggest mistake. He managed to get that team going up together with Alain
I think they are reducing the cost of acquisition for andretti especially for senior personnel severance.
I was expecting someone to make this video, glad to see the topic on this channel ☺️
Every year that passes shows that alonso's move was the first good one in many years. Without el plan alpain are nothing
Remember when they said they wanted to be the french ferrari💀
years ago i worked at a company called cherry products as a welder,one morning our 500amp welders were gutless,benneton were at the rear of us at enstone oxfordshire,turns out it was bennetons wind tunnel bringing the grid down,the power co put a gen set in and sent a tanker weekly to refuel it!.that was about 1998-9.
I remember Cyril saying on DTS that Renault has an entire nation behind it because the French public are the biggest shareholders of the company. And Renault wasn't the best by any means then, but they were seriously competitive in the midfield. Sad to see the decline.
Also Otmar was putting the building blocks to improve and the higher ups just screwed everything up.
Fia in February: Andreti isnt going to be competitive despite our rules set to make formula 1 very competitive and close
Alpine: the new 2019 Williams in all sessions in the first round
Fia after bahrian: Yes apline are still competitive but sorry no Andretti entering cause we think they will be even slower.
The Andretti had plans to use PU from Alpine so i think FIA is right. How can you take serious a team that wants PU from Alpine? I know America loves money and they want a slice of the cake now that in F1 was money. But if Andretti loved the sport they should have buy a force india or even lotus when F1 was struggling with money.
@@B.A.Georgian use your brain, Renault is The only customer power unit available to them because the other teams clearly don't want andretti in the sport, let alone sell their engines to them. This much is obvious.
As much as id love an 11th team...2022 was the year i stopped loving the enstone team...i couldn't care if they win or are p20...andretti however im a fan of theirs in indycar and im excited to see a herta in f1 or newgarden
Also ocon and Gasly sure are 4/5 drivers both but i just really dont care about both...they were unlucky but their career was weird its like they already had their time even though they aren't even 30
I don’t feel bad for their celebrity ownership group at all
you know F1 is in a good place when all the most interesting things are happening between race days.
Also, how uninspiring is the new Alpine Principal after firing Otmar. And the audacity of that guy on DTS to speak with such bravas as if he’d do a better job
Nice one Tommo! Great that you care
14:26 god that 2019 Williams livery was gopping
Not to mention losing 2 drivers that were very highly regarded.
But, management uptop probably still got their bonuses and full payments.
Wouldn't be surprised if they told staff below there is no wage rise or index adjustments.
Alpine in the WEC with their brand new Hypercar with a very competitive field scored a 9th and was racing the top Toyotas and Porsches in Qatar 1812KM. If this program can work, why on earth cannot the F1 arm get it right? There is questions in whether Renault are committed to the sport.
Problem is within Renault's commitment
As someone from Indiana I’m praying for the Andretti facility just so I can have the chance to potentially work for an F1 team.
Rebranding the team from Renault to Alpine was the beginning of the end. No one is taking them seriously since then lol
Hahaha “Mahk Wibbah” is still my favorite moment on this channel so happy you made a reference in this vid 😆
This may seem off topic but I miss the yellow and black car. Bring back the Renauly name and drop bwt ffs. Like they need any more money😂
what they gunna do next yeah change to Peugeot? worked great moving from Renault to Alpine xD
Look at Prost-Peugeot in the late 90s/2000 and see how dreadful they were. Alpine-Renault are going the same way.
The mark webber thing made me spit. xD It was so out of nowhere :D
7:00 2020 is an underrated season
Alpine have never been the same since Alonso left after his last WDC.
since Flavio Briatore left
Danny Ric was the instigator of this disaster. His departure left a clear mark on Cyril Irritable, probably the most sensible team boss in Post-Lotus Renault / Alpine era.
Let's get a minton and frank collab going!
Your videos are very quiet compared to other creators. Other than that great work!
As a proud frenchman, it's hard to see such an historic brand getting dragged in the dirt
What brand of alpine? Don't they only make one car? That's the problem: Renault doesn't have enough confidence to label it a Renault anymore.
They need Takuma Sato
I never wish any f1 team to do bad but ya im not surprised by the issues Alpine is having but i do hope they improve by the next season i think its a solid opportunity for teams like Haas or Williams to finish well and get the money they desperately need to have a competive car for seasons ahead where Alpine seems like their problems are mostly coming from the top so hopefully they get more competent leadership soon and start competing in the mid field again
As a wise man once said this is more commonly known as ……
A SHITSHOW
My question is tho, what brand? Alpine sells a single vehicle lol
Nothing brought me more happiness than the downfall of alpine. The people they’ve had working at that team over the years are less than likeable. Their lack of drive for moving up the table and lack of innovation after promise and promise and not delivering.. well deserved!! Hope they learn from this and improve.
The stunt with Rossi is the most intriguing. They brought an ex BCG consultant to run an F1 team.
17:27: Great news! A lot of people have heard of Dacia, they just know it from Top Gear and pronounce it Day-see-a.
Seriously, i just saw the w-series race Highlights, and very close racing, rear ending, a puncture from a front wing, lia crashing out, an the lead driver taking the chequered flag twice, while her engineer said nothing and loosing the win over that is such good drama, you should talk about it, especially since i dont know the Drivers, i want the drama
They should just sellout to andretti and Ryan's investment firm should try and enable this.
Alternatively this looks like a good moment for Porsche to get into the sport. Full acquisition.
It would be good risk management and provides an exit for a system that clearly isnt working.
Remember when they blamed Red Bull for a lack of performance in their engines? 🧐
How could you leave the 🐐 Alain Prost departue out of this. I dont know much of the internal workings of an F1 team, but once i saw he was leaving it was clear the team had massive stability issues.
"100 race project" "phase 2" "three pillared approach". Seems like they are so good at creating catchy yet vague phrases.
Only one man can save Alpine now....
Fock
And I get a mint mobile ad during this vid 😂😂😂
Not giving Alonso his contract extension is probably the stupidest driver decision theyve made, his wealth of knowledge about everything to do with the car and the strategy is priceless that might have even been able to bypass the idiocy coming from the top.
I honestly think Renault/Alpine's constant 'false dawn' years, constantly seeing fairly good years across 2018-2022, but never making that step up into being a consistent race winning car, as a works team, is worse than Williams' drop off after 2014-2016. This is a full blown works team, for most of it's time in the sport, this shouldn't be happening. Alpine is partially owned by the French government, like, hello? They shouldn't be outside the Top 2 teams every year.
Bring Back Cyril, there was NOT any of this during his era. he made questionable decisions but on his last year he made Renault a Podium Fighter Team.
It may just be me but it almost feels like WEC and GT makes more sense for Alpine’s brand promotion than F1. I always feel like to promote sports cars you go for WEC or gt racing and use those chassis and promote the brand to more direct customers. F1 suits Renault more as it promotes the overall brand rather than the tiny niche of one car (that isn’t even that sporty even if it’s a nice car). Mercedes, Honda, Audi. Yes Ferrari and Aston are super cars but they have pedigree in racing already so for them it makes more sense. Alpine needs to build the brand first because even my family that drive Renaults don’t know alpine or what the team is designed to represent
The only hope they have is 2026 regulation change but they have to keep the same structure from at least 2025 to get some stability in the team
Don't forget the extra weight on the body due to failed safety test! Those allegedly 10-11kg of extra weight costs them dearly in terms of lap times
Got my f1M alpine save to a championship. Where’s my phone call at?😂
Sad really ,we need a strong engine manufactuer like renault in the sport.
Alonso said it straight when he left them : unprofessional
Before slandering the A424 look at where the other new entries finished and who they beat. The A424 was pretty damn good.
It's been forever this way since Renault originally sold the team after Crashgate - Enstone has been a dumpster fire ever since
Switching to alpine was a mistake im the first place. Those yellow renault cars popped and they were better beforehand. Ik that this has 0 merit but they just were better in yellow😂
I live in Zurich, Switzerland. It's no Monaco, but you can see exotic cars in the streets basically every day. Bentleys and Astons and Ferraris and whatnot.
I have seen -1- Alpine since they have relaunched the brand.
Call it Renault, get Hugues de Chaunac or Henri Pescarolo to lead the team. Paint the damn car white, yellow and black.
I honestly thought Alpine was a mineral water brand like BWT and wondered by would Renault rebrand themselves to Alpine... I mean it sounds like that... Alpine has no presence in Asia (and I have lived 7 yrs in Dubai and not seen a single Alpine) unlike Renault... so I was confused... If not for F1 I don't think I would've heard of Alpine...
Do you think that Carlos Gosn has anything to do with the dumpster fire going on at Alpine?
Bruno Famin always looks like hes just had his dog put to sleep.
I think a different structure won’t fix Alpine‘s problems. McLaren improved soon after the structural changes, but we have to remember, that McLaren started 2023 surprisingly bad after having a few strong years. So therefore the netto improvement by McLaren is much smaller. I think the changes at McLaren are more for the long term and only time will tell, if these changes are improvements.
19:16 not literally right?
Not literally? Right?
flawless segway, as always 😄