Renault wants Alpine to be 'French Ferrari'. But is that a good thing?

Recent comments by Renault's CEO where he claims he wants to make Alpine the French Ferrari have caught the eye of everyone. Unfortunately for the French brand, all that comment has caught is bad press. Not many fans were impressed by such a proclamation and neither has it been received with any kind of seriousness by F1 pundits either.

The reason behind that has been Renault's almost decade-old presence on the grid and changing stances in F1. The team joined the grid in 2016 and set out on a 4-year plan to be a consistent frontrunner. The only that happened during that time was the exodus of the top management that was replaced by new brass. Since then, the team has embarked on another 5-year plan that began in 2022 but has been disrupted already and the senior management has been chucked out once again.

For a moment, let's ignore the almost lack of seriousness, planning, and purpose with which the Renault group has gone about handling the Alpine F1 team. Let's talk about the latest proclamation made by Luca de Meo.

Is it even a good thing for Alpine to become the French Ferrari? Does that even make sense?

What does it mean to be the 'French Ferrari'

Before anything else, let's try to understand what being 'French Ferrari' means for Alpine, and for that, first of all, let's take a look at what Luca de Meo said. In his latest media briefing, he said:

“Alpine Formula 1 team will become the French Ferrari. In France, there still isn’t enough passion for the world of motorsport. This is because the fans don’t have a team to support, as Italy has with Ferrari. We want to combine the history of our team with its colours so that fans can be more engaged."

He added:

"Our goal is to link Alpine's colours with feelings of passion, as we did with the Fiat 500 at the time. The idea is to tie history to these colours and thus create commitment."

The inception of these aspirations does stem from what happened at the start of the season in Maranello during Ferrari's car launch.

It is often said that if F1 titles were given for car launches, the Scuderia will win every year. This season however it stood out even more because of the almost formal and morose manner in which the other 9 teams went about their car launches.

Ferrari, however, had by far the best car launch where even from the screen you could feel the passion that went behind putting everything together.

What was eye-catching was the support that the team had as well with the fans shouting at the top of their voice when the car rolled out on the track.

This is something that the Italian squad has built over not only decades of racing and presence but the success that came with it. Even though the team might be the biggest letdown of the last decade or so, it is still the most successful team in the history of the sport.

Ferrari means winning, and it is that shiny object that attracts everyone in the world.

It is this success that has helped the brand's sales all over the globe as well. Even this season, although the F1 campaign might turn out dry, the brand is still the reigning LeMans 24-hour winner and that should hold the brand in good stead.

To add to this, there's no crowd in the world like the one that gathers every year at Monza even if the team wins or loses. It is this appeal that has sustained Ferrari for this long in F1 and would do so for decades to come.

This is what Luca de Meo wants for Alpine.

What it needs to do to achieve that

The first thing that Alpine needs to do to achieve what Ferrari has is become successful. The team needs to be successful and that has to be a priority. It has to be considered Mercedes' biggest failure in F1 that the German brand could not stimulate fandom from its own country despite having the most dominant reign in F1 history.

There is no official F1 German GP on the calendar and Mercedes has to take a part of the blame for the lack of fanfare in the country.

This is exactly what Alpine needs to avoid because even France does not have a race on the calendar anymore. Paul Ricard was a part of it but it has been removed since then.

On the other hand, if you look at Ferrari, there are two races in Italy and one cannot question the future of either of those races right now.

For Alpine, the target is two-fold where the team achieves success and gains the iconic brand value that the Italian marque has at the moment.

Alpine's age-old corporate vs racing divide that plagues Ferrari as well

Now, when we talk about setting priorities. Alpine's biggest priority will be achieving success in F1 and that means a sustainable challenge at the front of the grid.

To do that, there already is a model in place that has worked for the last decade or so. Since 2010, only two teams have won the world championships in F1 and both of them have a very similar operation.

These teams are Red Bull and Mercedes and both of them are independent racing units headed by ambitious and tenacious leaders in Christian Horner and Toto Wolff respectively. In terms of interference from the corporates in suits sitting in company headquarters, it just does not exist.

When we talk about Ferrari, this is the real concern as for the last decade or so, there has been just too much interference. More often than not, this interference proves to be counterproductive because a racing team just cannot be run by sitting in a board room.

The only time the Italian squad has been successful in the last four decades has been during the Jean Todt era when he was in charge of the racing team and took no prisoners.

Alpine, on the other hand, is already a corporate mess. In so many ways, there is a similarity in how the French team is run and how its Italian counterpart goes about business. The only difference is that Renault has not been willing to loosen the strings of its purse while the Scuderia does not think twice about throwing money.

What Renault is trying to achieve is success in F1 with less funding and resources than its competitors and with a corporate structure that mirrors one of the most spectacularly failed operations in the sport.

In terms of its F1 project, Renault might already be the French Ferrari. It is political, it is turbulent, and now it is far too erratic to be trustworthy. All it needs to do is increase its spending within the sport and it will be similar to the Italian brand in terms of operations within the sport.

Alpine aspires to have the success of Mercedes combined with the acceptance of love from the fans that Ferrari gets. Can it achieve both of them together? It will take wholesale changes not only in the team but in the mindset as well.

One thing is for sure, though. If the mindset is just to mimic Ferrari and how it goes about things in F1, Alpine is setting itself up for failure once again.