Alpine tackle 'very hard question' with crystal clear F1 message

Alpine executive adviser Flavio Briatore insists that Renault and the entirety of the team are "committed" to the F1 project at Enstone.

After a turbulent campaign in 2025, the French team has enjoyed a strong start to the F1 season. Franco Colapinto secured his first point since taking over the second seat from Jack Doohan almost a year ago, and Pierre Gasly bagged a sixth-place finish at the Chinese Grand Prix to go with his own point from Melbourne.

He followed that up with seventh position at Suzuka, after outlasting Max Verstappen in a titanic 25-lap battle between the pair.

Alpine has also transitioned from being a works outfit to a Mercedes power unit customer. This, coupled with the Brackley-based squad being interested in purchasing a 24% stake in the team, has led some to suggest that Renault may not be looking to stay in F1 for the long haul.

Since re-entering the championship in 2016, the French car manufacturer has burned through multiple five-year plans, and has only taken one grand prix victory — a far cry from the targets set, or from Team Enstone's heyday with Fernando Alonso.

When Briatore was asked what Alpine must do to return to winning ways, the Italian reaffirmed Renault's commitment to the project.

"This is a very hard question," the 75-year-old initially told media, including RacingNews365. "I don’t know.

"We try to do our best and to improve year by year. But now we have everything to be competitive. We are very happy with the engine we have. We are quite happy about all the team.

"Sure, we’ve done a lot of changes in the team, and we need to prepare the base, la pierre angulaire, to build up the team.

"It takes a few years, like everybody. We want to win, and we’ll see. We’re just working hard and see what happens.

"But we are very committed, Renault is committed, and the team is committed. So we see. We try our best like everybody else."

Mercedes 'motivation'

Whilst Mercedes has dominated the early rounds of the year, the teams it supplies have not been able to extract as much performance from the power unit.

This is to be expected, given the eight-time constructors' champion has developed and worked closely with it for longer, but Briatore insists how the Toto Wolff-led team is faring is "motivation" for Alpine.

"[For] so many years, we have seen Red Bull with the same situation," He said of Mercedes' strong opening salvo to the season and regulations cycle.

"We need to learn, we need to learn and try to do better, and congratulations, honestly, they’ve done a better job. This is the reality.

"But it happened already with Red Bull for many years, and now it has happened with Mercedes. I hope we will be strong enough from now to the end of the season to be closer to Mercedes.

"This is our motivation, and we need to be learning from these people; they’ve done a super job."