How Briatore is already living up to his Alpine remit

“Flavio,” a senior Formula 1 figure remarked to GP Racing at the British Grand
Prix weekend,  “has made a
huge change to the culture at Alpine, almost overnight.”

You can’t have missed Flavio Briatore’s re-installation for a third stint in charge of ‘Team Enstone’, at the behest of Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo. Flav’s job title is ‘Executive Adviser’ but nobody was fooled, least of all the usually somnambulant team principal Bruno Famin, who very quickly became a minister without portfolio and has now – to the sound of nobody's jaw dropping – joined the swelling ranks of ex-leaders who have exited Enstone's revolving doors at grand vitesse.

The signs that Bruno was yesterday's man were there for all to see in Barcelona, Briatore’s first weekend in the hot seat, when Alpine-supported Abi Pulling won the first of the F1 Academy races and Flavio led the veritable conga line of dignitaries to congratulate her at the head of the pitlane. Lost in the morass, virtually invisible, lurked Famin – looking, in the words of PG Wodehouse, very much like a man who had gone searching for the leak in life's gas pipe with a lighted candle.

Based on the faltering performances of septuagenarian politicians Stateside, you might ask what a 74-year old can offer a supposedly dynamic and fast-moving Formula 1 organisation. Flav has already provided an answer. He brings purpose, leadership – and, yes, energy.

“Coming to the races when you have nothing to do is boring like hell… walking around from one garage to another saying hello to
people – after two hours it’s enough.”

These were Briatore’s words to Autosport when he returned to the F1 paddock in April 2000 after three years ‘away’ to head up the Benetton team he’d led to two world championships and a whole heap of controversy in the 1990s. They ring as true today as they did then.

The fact is, he can’t keep away. So long as there are strings to pull, he’ll make a grab for them.

Briatore, pictured congratulating Pulling after her latest F1 Academy win, has already put himself front and centre of Alpine's operations

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

If you were to pinpoint a time when Briatore inked himself indelibly as one of motor racing’s key movers and shakers it was in the early autumn of 1991, when Michael Schumacher’s glorious grand prix debut with Jordan provided a thrilling side narrative to the championship run-in between Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell. Within days, Briatore and F1 ‘ringmaster’ Bernie Ecclestone had schemed and colluded to extract Michael from a contract that wasn’t as binding as Eddie Jordan
believed it to be… and place him at Benetton.

Viewed through the prism of cold commercial logic it made perfect sense, Jordan being on the verge of extinction and Benetton being in the ascendant, backed by an ambitious and wealthy clothing empire. But in PR terms it was a resounding dud, playing out to boo-hoos among those who had failed to get the memo that F1 was a business, and immediately tarnishing Michael’s clean-cut image.

There’s a fascinating photo of Michael and his entourage hustling towards a helicopter at the back of the Monza paddock, getting the hell out of Dodge after a fraught first weekend in Benetton colours. It might not be the most artful shot Rainer Schlegelmilch ever composed but he’s captured a moment rich in body language.

Flavio hasn’t come back to shake hands with the denizens of neighbouring garages and pocket a healthy paycheque while prancing around in team kit – he’s here to bang heads together and get results

Willi Weber, Michael’s Mr 20%, leads the way, left hand gripping a Louis Vuitton briefcase. Further up the wrist, to complete the nouveau riche ensemble, rides a gold Rolex Datejust with a leather strap. Right
hand rubbing at a stubbled cheek (it might be clutching a mobile phone had such things not been the size of house bricks in ’91), he casts a weary and wary glance towards the assembled paparazzi.

Clearly anxious to depart after a weekend at the centre of a protracted legal wrangle which proved uglier than a kebab shop fistfight, Michael has his head down, shoulders hunched, face set in a rictus of disgruntlement. He’s pointedly ignoring the photographers and glaring at the man carefully stowing luggage in the back of the chopper. If they were entering a London Underground station he’d be close enough to tailgate his manager through the ticket barriers.

Third in line, clearly in no hurry at all – perhaps musing that Michael, with his (almost) matching fawn jacket, plain briefcase and cheaper watch, resembles a younger version of Willi – is Briatore.
In contrast to Weber and Schumacher, he doesn’t look as if he has a care in the world – rather like the way a tiger will maul its keeper to death and then, half an hour later, casually wonder where he is with dinner.

He is the alpha male who doesn’t have to prove or justify himself. And he’d carry that same air of insouciant disinterest through all the scandals to come, from Benetton’s illegal traction control (case dropped since the FIA was unable to prove the system had been used, even though the software existed in a hidden menu), to tampering with the refuelling rigs (little more than a slap on the wrist), to ordering a driver to crash to affect the outcome of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix (lifetime ban from motorsport overturned on appeal).

Briatore is a bona fide Teflon Don, always able to escape the consequences of his actions. His backstory is in parts vague and shrouded by his own self-mythology, in other parts freighted with provable roguery: mafia connections and a fraud conviction for which he never served a day in jail. He is a man who gets things done without wringing his hands over moral qualms.

Briatore orchestrated Schumacher's exit from Jordan in 1991 and the body language visible in this famous shot from Monza that year hasn't changed

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

Flavio has kept a relatively low-key presence over the past several years, watching from the sidelines as F1’s new owners bundled Ecclestone, his old compadre, out of the door… and then swiftly inveigled his way into the inner circle of current CEO Stefano Domenicali, acting as ‘fixer’ in the sponsorship deal with MSC Cruises.

Six months ago Alpine was no self-respecting driver’s idea of a worthwhile gig; within days of slipping his loafers under the desk, Briatore had several talents nibbling at the hook. Carlos Sainz went from being all but nailed on at Sauber/Audi to more than entertaining an approach from Alpine – indeed, it’s understood Briatore played hardball, saying the only deal on the table was a two-year contract rather than the one-plus-one Sainz wanted.

While one hand spun this plate, another was working on a more ambitious proposal: acting as a finishing school for Mercedes protégé Andrea Kimi Antonelli in exchange for a discounted Merc engine supply. Unthinkable until recently but no longer, now the Renault group is no longer wedded to the idea of being an engine manufacturer.

Sneer if you will but Famin – in his new function as executive adviser’s messenger – was spotted ascending to the management floor of the
Merc motorhome at Silverstone.

Renault Sport’s facility at Viry-Chatillon, where the company pioneered turbocharged F1 engines in the 1970s and, later, pneumatic valve actuation while creating world-beating V10s in the early 1990s, is expected to be shut down. It’s believed Briatore is responsible for executively advising Luca de Meo to send this sacred cow to the abattoir despite a costly infrastructure upgrade and recruitment push four years ago. The sunk cost fallacy is one he has the ability to deftly and unsentimentally avoid.

What you get from Flavio is leadership, and what marks him out
from the likes of previous Alpine executive Laurent Rossi is that he understands the limits of his abilities rather than massively overestimating them. He has an almost unerring nose for competence and uses this to recruit the right people to plug those gaps in his knowledge, particularly in engineering matters.

Rumours that Oliver Oakes, team principal of the successful Hitech F3/F2 outfits, is being teed up to take that role at Alpine are very much in keeping with Briatore's methods. He needs people who know how to run a successful race team rather than push pens around a desk and tug the forelock to visiting delegates from the c-suite.

At the end of last year Alpine’s former chief technical officer, Pat Fry, revealed he left the team because he “didn’t feel there was the enthusiasm or drive to move forward beyond fourth place”. Flavio hasn’t come back to shake hands with the denizens of neighbouring garages and pocket a healthy paycheque while prancing around in team kit – he’s here to bang heads together and get results.

Take some executive advice from F1 history: he doesn’t care what gets broken in the process.

Briatore is already getting down to business of shaking things up to make Alpine a player at the front of the grid once again

Photo by: Mark Sutton