Flavio Briatore maintains he will "do what is best" for Alpine when it comes to the French squad's F1 driver line-up. Over the F1 winter break, Team Enstone stole headlines on account of it signing Franco Colapinto to reserve driver duties from Williams. In doing so, it crystallised the already-mounting pressure that was being heaped onto its second driver, rookie Jack Doohan. There has been widespread but thus far unfounded speculation that the Australian will have only a handful of rounds to impress Briatore and the rest of the Alpine management once the season gets underway with his home grand prix in Melbourne. The rumours have been exacerbated by the arrival of Colapinto, who Briatore is known to be a fan of. The Argentine joins an already-packed house at Alpine, forming a trio of drivers waiting in the wings with Paul Aron and Ryo Hirakawa. But that is exactly the way Briatore wants things to be. The 74-year-old explained his approach to Motorsport.com . "For me, Formula 1 is like managing a restaurant," the Italian said . "It is the same. You're managing people. And we need to ensure that 1,000 people are working in the factory and I have a responsibility for their salary. "I prefer to do what is best for the team. If you have two drivers, the choice is between two drivers. If you have five, the choice is between five."
Finding the heir to Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso's throne
Briatore has returned to Alpine to return it to the championship glory he attained at the helm of Team Enstone, when it was Benetton and later Renault in the mid 1990s to mid 2000s. He is adamant that whilst the name above the door might be different, it is the same team - just with a little less success than it previously enjoyed. "Of the people in the factory when I arrived, I knew maybe 20 percent of them but these people remember the winning with Fernando Alonso," Briatore said. "I still see the quality of the team, I see that. The problem was the frustration in the way it was set up. You need to all be under the same roof," he added to expand upon his reason for coming back to the team . Ultimately, Briatore believes Alpine can be restored to championship-winning ways, he is just not sure Pierre Gasly or Doohan is necessarily going to play the part of Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso he explained, leaning heavily on a film metaphor. "We did it with Benetton. We did it with Renault. If you see what we did at Benetton, Renault was the same movie, we just changed the actor," he stated. "In Benetton, the actor was Michael Schumacher and in Renault the actor was Fernando Alonso. Now, we need to do another movie, but we don't know yet who the actor will be."
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