Why Renault's survivor wasn't part of Alpine's plans

It's said that all political careers end in failure. Thrusting young people with ambition align themselves with the most powerful and influential stars in their firmament, only to suffer the consequences when those stars eventually diminish or blink out.

So farewell, then, Cyril Abiteboul - or Cyril Irritable, as one rival team principal nicknamed him - whose departure from Renault was marked by the classically understated medium of a tersely worded press release in early January, a week before the company provided a first peek at how its newly rebranded Alpine F1 team might look.

Luca de Meo's appointment last July as chief executive of the Renault Group - a long-term replacement for the disgraced Carlos Ghosn - naturally suggested that change might be coming, regardless of his apparent enthusiasm for the F1 project. But Abiteboul's exit came as something of a surprise because he's always been a survivor.

He caught his first break in the mid-2000s after a digital rights proposal he'd written for the Grand Prix Manufacturers' Association (an abortive breakaway series born of friction between the car makers and Bernie Ecclestone) made its way to the desk of Renault F1 team principal Flavio Briatore. That led to a business development role and a position alongside the boss as paperwork wrangler - leading in later years for him to be dubbed by one of the other bigwigs as "Flav's tea boy".

When in 2009 Briatore was ejected in disgrace post-'Crashgate', Cyril had enough traction with Renault's high-ups at the time to avoid the fate of his mentor. This was a febrile period indeed as Renault sold 'Team Enstone' to Genii Capital but remained in F1 as an engine supplier since Ghosn was persuaded that this would remain a strong revenue stream.

Developments in the hybrid era would bring change on that front but in the interim, Abiteboul spent 18 months as team principal of Caterham in F1: at that point, Renault's plan was to resurrect Alpine via a joint venture with Caterham, and Abiteboul's presence was a means of having a Renault man in a hands-on role. When Caterham folded, he was thrown a lifeline by Renault Sport boss Jerome Stoll, who needed new faces on board to pour balm on an increasingly toxic relationship with Red Bull.

While overpromising and under-delivering has proved to be another storyline during Abiteboul's tenure, he succeeded very well in protecting the team during the boardroom turbulence which followed Ghosn's arrest

This Abiteboul was unable to carry off, and his dysfunctional relationship with Red Bull team principal Christian Horner became an enduring thread in the narrative of the hybrid era. Motor racing is a small ecosystem in which it is unwise to make enemies, even if you have powerful allies within your own organisation. Becoming part of a tawdry exchange of small-arms fire with a body which owns almost a quarter of the cars on the grid wasn't a strong tactical play.

Nevertheless we must credit Abiteboul for his part in selling Ghosn the idea of coming back in as a manufacturer, even though his proposed timeline of restoring the team to winning ways in five years proved embarrassingly optimistic.

There have been mistakes along the way - arguably the most notable being the hiring of Daniel Ricciardo when Renault didn't have a car befitting an A-lister. The expense of recruiting Ricciardo also required cutbacks to be made elsewhere.

While overpromising and under-delivering has proved to be another storyline during Abiteboul's tenure, he succeeded very well in protecting the team during the boardroom turbulence which followed Ghosn's arrest. Despite the F1 team's recent upswing in performance it was always likely, after Jerome Stoll was pushed into retirement last December, that further purges would occur and would focus on Stoll appointees.

De Meo has already unveiled plans for Renault's road car division which take it in a radically different direction from that espoused by Ghosn. It's hardly surprising, then, that he should want a new face heading up the fresh agenda for Alpine.

The next question is whether incoming 'racing director' (a placeholder job title if ever there was one) Davide Brivio knew what he was letting himself in for, and indeed whether the organisation he has joined quite matches the vision he had been sold.

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After 30 years in motor racing, 20 at the sharp end of motorcycle racing, Brivio has not only proved himself well capable of appraising rigorously the risks and rewards of moving teams, he can name his price when doing so. It will not have escaped him that when Frederic Vasseur was hired as Renault F1 team principal in 2016 he lasted but a few months in the role. Upon leaving, Vasseur spoke of "too much different vision in the management of the team", by which he meant irreconcilable differences with Stoll and Abiteboul.

Knowing this, an operator of Brivio's pedigree and shrewdness would not have signed up for more of the same. The timing of the various moves suggests an orchestration from above - and that, of course, means de Meo. This is his organisation now, from top to bottom.