The answer is likely contingent on whether Alpine gets help from Renault.
As Formula One fans know, there have been new stories galore about the sport, many of them about unflattering or troubling off-track matters. But there is a major story about an on-track issue, and it’s not whether any team can overtake Red Bull or any driver can unseat Max Verstappen. It’s about the serious situation at Alpine Formula 1: a slow engine with a chassis slower than any other car on the grid.
The situation does not bode well for Alpine, a team experiencing a downward trajectory: a 4th-place finish in the 2022 Constructor’s Championship, finishing 6th in 2023, to standing in 10th-place currently with no points (last among the teams) going into this weekend’s Australian GP.
It is essential to go back in time to understand what has happened. At the end of 2020, Renault–the company that owns Alpine–decided it wasn’t a good idea to continue supporting the Formula 1 team despite achieving three podiums that season, two by Daniel Ricciardo and one by Esteban Ocon. CEO Luca de Meo divided the company: Renault stepped away from the Formula 1 racing development, SUV Dacia would be run separately, and Alpine would be the sports car/racing division.
That reorganization worked for a bit of time. But on the racing side, shifting responsibility to Alpine for issues that Renault no longer wanted to deal with is hurting Formula One success–despite some success experienced by Alpine’s World Endurance Championship (WEC) team (finishing 8th of 37 teams in the season’s first race in Qatar).
The main thing is that Alpine Formula One needs more support from Renault to fix current problems and make Alpine competitive again. That won’t happen unless ownership wants it, including making key personnel and other major organizational decisions.
Will that happen? The answer has implications beyond one team. A competitive Alpine team is good for the sport, but a blatantly uncompetitive Alpine is not.
