Why star-struck Alpine F1 drivers aren't the biggest beneficiary of Zidane's wisdom

It's a chilly winter morning. There's a bit of hustle and bustle outside gate 28 of Madrid's biggest stadium, the legendary Santiago Bernabeu, which is currently being renovated. The presence of a few police cars and TV crews suggests this is no ordinary day.

At 1045, Esteban Ocon pulls up to the entrance to the Real Madrid museum in a green Alpine A110S. Yet the F1 driver is more of a guest than a protagonist today. A few selfies later, he joins GP Racing in the huddle to wait for an even bigger sports star – the man who, as player and manager, has won four Champions League trophies and three La Liga titles with the team that owns this very stadium.

Zinedine Zidane arrives a few minutes later in another A110. The purple hoodie grants him anonymity for only a few seconds. His distinctive look and walk can’t be disguised. “Zizou!” shouts a group of teenagers who happen to be nearby and, as he makes his way towards the F1 driver waiting for him no more than a dozen metres away, Zidane manages to attract a swarm of passers-by and random visitors who happened to have bought a ticket to the Real Madrid museum
at just the right moment.

The crowd, which also includes a handful of Alpine junior drivers, effectively ‘boxes out’ the security guards at the entrance. And Pierre Gasly, who has cut short his holiday to fly to Madrid to meet Zidane, now makes his way through that crowd with a look not dissimilar to that of the schoolboy next to him trying to get a selfie with a legend.

“You know, one of the reasons I chose the number 10 in F1 is because of him,” he tells GP Racing later.
“I also won the Formula Renault 2.0 title in 2013 with that number, but yeah, as a kid I obviously looked up to Zizou, and when I played football I always wanted to have the number 10 on my back.

“I have a lot of memories of sitting in front of the TV and watching the national team games, and he was
the captain for quite a few years.
I have this very clear, actually quite sad image of his last World Cup in 2006. I remember I was in Douvrin for a French championship and
I was watching the final in my caravan with my cousin, who was supporting Italy. France lost and I ended up crying all evening.”

For Gasly, playing football with Zidane was the realisation of a lifetime dream

Photo by: Alpine

Since last year Gasly and Zidane have been colleagues of sorts. The former France captain is now an ambassador for Alpine, overseeing among other things two of the brand’s ‘racing’ projects. One is the Rac(H)er programme, which aims not only to find and bring a female driver into F1 in the foreseeable future but also to “empower women and encourage new generations to join the motorsport industry”. The other is the Concours Excellence Mecanique, a competition for mechanics, the winners of which get the chance to do an internship at Viry-Chatillon, where the engines for Alpine’s F1 team are built.

It’s Zidane’s initiative to invite the Alpine family to Madrid after a long racing season – and there’s no better way to start the day than with a tour around the Bernabeu. This is a private visit, so even the cameras have to wait outside – but that hardly gives Zidane a break from being the centre of attention.

Shielded by the drivers, he’s protected from the constant requests for selfies, but casual visitors to the Real Madrid museum join the tour group when they see one of the greatest stars in the team’s history, and it grows as they move from one stand to the next. Zidane, completely unfazed by the crowds, listens attentively and courteously to the guide, occasionally supplementing her story with details of his own. The tour ends with a group photo in the stands. But the day is far from over, as the group sets off to the Rosewood Hotel, where a makeshift racetrack awaits.

Born in the garage

Now it looks a lot more like a formal media event. Outside the hotel, Zidane poses for pictures with Ocon, Gasly and the F1 team’s sporting director Julian Rouse, members of the Alpine Academy, and those who will remember this day even more vividly: two girls from Alpine’s Rac(H)er programme, 15-year-old Lisa Billard and 11-year-old Sukhmani Khera, and two French mechanics, Nicolas Lucien and Achille Thurotte, the winners
of the Concours Excellence Mecanique competition.

Even the fact that the electric karts’ motors have been turned down doesn’t prevent a battle kicking off. The drivers soon catch up with Zidane and, without showing any sign of reverence, start bumping into the back of his kart

Zidane shares the ambassadorship of the latter programme with Ocon, who not only helps promote it but is also one of its sponsors. And the way he talks about it, there’s no doubt that Esteban, son of a mechanic, is not just doing it to boost his own image.

“I was born in the garage,” Ocon tells GP Racing. “I used to come home after school and work on cars with my dad. I watched F1 on TV and dreamed about it. But people around me were saying ‘it’s not for you’, ‘you’ll never get there’, ‘it’s impossible’, all those things. In spite of all that, I wanted to get close to that world, to work there – maybe one day – as a mechanic. But there was no clear path.

“I would have dreamed that someone would have guided me, that if there was a competition I would have tried to win it. Instead everyone said ‘you’ll never make it’. So when the opportunity came up and we had the idea with Alpine to do something like this, I thought: ‘We have to make it happen’.

“You know, it’s all about equality. These guys are here on merit, because they’re clearly some of the best mechanics in the world.
It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what nationality
you are, if you’re male or female – you should have the same opportunities. If you’re passionate, if you work hard, if you’re one of the best, you should make it.”

Before heading to the football pitch, Zidane was thrust into the lions den in a 'friendly' karting competition

Photo by: Alpine

But can Zidane drive?

Next on the agenda is what racing drivers love most. Actual racing. An improvised circuit, laid out with plastic fencing, has been set up in the hotel’s underground car park. With neon lights and Alpine cars lined up along the sides, the track looks pretty impressive, but the barriers are perhaps a little less robust than you might expect – even at your local arrive-and-drive facility.

So, before the drivers jump into their go-karts to have a “race” with Zidane, Rouse calls them over to remind them that the main task today is to “have fun” and not to let the red mist descend. It’s the youngsters who need a bit of polite instruction. After all, it’s not every day they get to share the track with two F1 drivers and a living legend of world sport.

“Today isn’t important, guys,” smiles Ocon. “What’s important is the season ahead.”

The instructions hold firm, but only for a few moments. Finishing his first lap, Gasly slowly drives past the TV cameras with his hand in the air, jokingly imitating a victory gesture. But he’s almost immediately caught by Kean Nakamura Berta, European and World karting champion and one of the hottest talents of his generation – and even the fact that the electric karts’ motors have been turned down doesn’t prevent a battle kicking off.

The drivers soon catch up with Zidane and, without showing any sign of reverence, start bumping into the back of his kart. Minutes later, there are duels all over the track and some of the plastic barriers are fit only for the recycling bin.

“You tell the drivers not to race, they say ‘OK’ – and immediately forget about it,” Rouse observes, shaking his head. After the session, Zidane, still in his kart, receives some advice from the two Rac(H)er programme participants, Billard and Khera.

“I told him not to move the steering wheel too much and to
keep your speed up in the high-speed corners,” 11-year-old Sukhmani explains to the select group of media present.

Her slightly older colleague, one of the strongest female karters in Europe, faces questions about the prospect of becoming the first woman in F1 in more than 30 years. Questions she’ll probably hear a lot in the coming years. “It’s not about gender,” Lisa says, “it’s about whether you’re good enough.”

Despite tuning down the motors on the electric karts, no quarters were spared with racing against Zidane

Photo by: Alpine

“To answer your question, F1 needs the 20 best drivers in the world,” Gasly elucidates. “Whether the 20 best drivers are girls or boys doesn’t matter. So it could be that the 20 best are all female.

“What we’re trying to do here is give equal opportunities, because we can see it’s a very male-dominated sport, and more opportunities are generally given to boys from a younger age. The programme is designed to give these girls the best chance to get the maximum potential out of themselves.”

Like both the Alpine F1 drivers, Lisa comes from Normandy –
and she’s already had a chance
to share the track with Ocon on
a couple of occasions.

"If that is so inspirational for me, imagine what it does for them! A day like this is a huge boost for the boys and the girls, too" Esteban Ocon

“She has the same coach as we had, me and Pierre,” Esteban says. “So she’s in good hands. She’s training on the same kart track we used to train on, and she’s proven she’s one of the best in the world. Not in the women’s category, but overall, boys and girls, all together. And she’s going to keep going.

“When you guys ask these silly questions, ‘when are you going to be in F1?’... Chill! Even when I was young, if somebody asked me that, my dad would say, ‘Chill. One step at a time.’ That’s what Zidane says as well: it’s important to focus on what you’re doing, not the outcome. That’s exactly what we should do with any young athletes. You should not put that negative pressure.

“Like Lisa said, it doesn’t matter if you’re a girl or a boy. You know, what matters in the end is that you know how talented you are.”

Of course, a typical F1 driver’s schedule militates against Esteban joining Lisa and other members of the Rac(H)er programme at races or training sessions once the season gets going. And it wouldn’t make much sense for Zidane to give the girls racing advice either.

But what they can do is set an example and be a source of motivation. The day may be a marketing event for Alpine – from a PR point of view, it’s essential to have diversity programmes, and it helps a company’s image – but if a day like this can also be really inspirational, that’s a huge bonus.

All eyes were on the master when the helmets came off and activities centred around football

Photo by: Alpine

Stars in their eyes

It’s football time. The drivers and Zidane, accompanied by members of his family, walk out onto the artificial pitch in front of the hotel. Noticing that the girls have lingered outside, Zinedine escorts them onto the pitch himself. Now it’s his turn to show them the ropes.

Gasly, who now has the chance to play alongside his childhood hero, can’t hide his excitement – and even rings his girlfriend to brag about what’s about to happen.

“When I was a kid, I never thought I’d have a day like this,” he tells GP Racing later. “To share the track with Zidane... I mean, it was just super cool! We had a bit of a fight and I even had some contact with him and we were racing wheel-to-wheel. I hope he’s not too sore after the couple of laps we did together! And the football game
was just a highlight for me, sharing the pitch with Zizou and actually playing in his team... I just had
stars in my eyes.”

For Ocon, who’s followed Zidane’s career since childhood, the trip to Madrid will be no less memorable.

“The thing is, it’s not just this meeting,” he says before bidding Zidane farewell. “I was with him in Monaco in ’22, then at the launch of our 2023 car, then in Viry for the Concours Excellence Mecanique event. He’s someone who is really dedicated to the cause.

“We also had dinner last night. The things we talked about will make me a lot richer, mentally and psychologically. He told me a lot of things about how he keeps calm in certain situations when the pressure is immense, like, you know, a World Cup penalty or something like that, how to keep the stress level down and focus on the right things. He gave me a lot of different views on that. And those are things I’m definitely going to keep to myself for the future. And that, of course, gives me a mega motivation...

“So, if that is so inspirational for me, imagine what it does for them! A day like this is a huge boost for the boys and the girls, too.
That’s the most important thing.”

Alpine's F1 drivers and Academy members got the chance to meet and learn from Zidane

Photo by: Alpine