Flavio Briatore Puts the Fernando Alonso Rumors to Rest: “The Driver is Not Our Priority”

The Formula 1 rumor mill loves a homecoming story. For weeks, the paddock has been swirling with speculation that Flavio Briatore was orchestrating a massive political coup to lure Fernando Alonso back to Enstone for a shock 2027 campaign.

However, in a brutal reality check for nostalgic fans hoping for a reunion between the two-time world champion and his former manager, Briatore is officially pouring cold water on the superstar driver market. Alpine is not looking for a savior behind the wheel. Instead, the French outfit is executing one of the most drastic corporate tear-downs in modern F1 history to fix its fundamentally broken hardware.

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In a recent interview with The Race, the Alpine Executive Advisor made it abundantly clear that throwing a blank check at a multi-time world champion is completely incompatible with the team’s current crisis.

“In this moment, the driver is really not our priority,” Briatore explained.

The veteran dealmaker emphasized that an elite driver is only valuable when the machinery is already operating at the sharp end of the grid. “You need to fit the driver in the team the moment you believe the driver gives these two, three tenths, makes a big difference,” he noted.

Alpine’s 300-Employee Purge and Engine Reality

Briatore’s blunt assessment stems from the catastrophic operational state he inherited. You cannot put an expensive, top-tier driver into a structurally flawed car. To fix the underlying performance, Alpine is currently undergoing a painful metamorphosis under the leadership of Briatore.

The most drastic change involves Alpine completely surrendering its status as a factory works team. Parent company Renault has officially shuttered its historic Viry-Châtillon power unit program, waving the white flag on internal engine development to become a Mercedes customer team starting in 2026. This allows the team to simply buy the “best engine in the back of the car” rather than bleeding capital trying to build one.

May 21, 2026; Montreal, Quebec, CANADA; Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso (14) arrives to the paddock area at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve. Mandatory Credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images

Simultaneously, the Enstone chassis facility has been gutted to eliminate corporate bloat. As Briatore confirmed during the interview, the UK-based workforce has faced massive cuts.

“Don’t forget, this team, we arrived in this team with 1,200, 1,300 people,” he stated. “Now we dropped to 900 people”.

By slashing roughly 25% of its workforce, Briatore is actively attempting to shift the culture from a slow-moving, heavily politicized corporate entity back into a lean, aggressive racing outfit.

Building the Foundation Over Buying the Headline

In the era of the F1 cost cap, resource allocation is everything. Spending aggressively on a marquee name makes sense for a team that believes its infrastructure is finally ready to compete for wins. But for an Alpine team that spent the early part of the regulation cycle fielding the slowest car on the grid, prioritizing the driver over the engineering department is a recipe for disaster.

“Today, my priority is to build a racing team. This is the priority,” Briatore affirmed. “We need to build the confidence between engineering. We need to build complicity between everybody”.

Until the Enstone engineers can deliver a highly optimized chassis capable of fighting at the front—and successfully integrate their new Mercedes power units and gearboxes—the identity of the man sitting in the cockpit is entirely secondary. The Alonso reunion might make for a great headline, but Briatore knows that right now, Alpine needs better hardware, not a superstar.

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