2021 F1 Alpine New Car Launch Review: James Punt
2021 F1 Alpine New Car Launch Review
2021 F1 Alpine – The new name for Renault’s Formula 1 team. The name has changed and so has the driver and management line up.
Fernando Alonso returns to the team with whom he won his two F1 World Championships back in 2005 and 2006. He is now 39 years old which is pushing it a bit in terms of the required level of fitness, rection times and so on. He has still got a lot to offer but he is unlikely to be any better than what he was when he ‘retired’ in 2018. Alonso was a deflated figure then, realising that another title was a pipe dream unless he got a seat at Mercedes and that was not going to happen. Two years playing about in other series has made him miss F1 and he has been able to land a seat at his spiritual home.
Are Alonso’s Best Days Behind Him?
The question is now long his rekindled love for F1 will last if Alpine cannot give him a race winning car? Renault had made steady, if unspectacular, progress in getting back to a reasonable level. However, they are still some way off Mercedes and had fallen behind McLaren and Racing Point. Alonso is not here to make up the numbers and he will want to be competing for podiums at the very least. He can be a difficult character when things are not going well though. We shall have to wait and see just how long this latest chapter of his career will last.
Alonso’s preparation was disrupted by a traffic accident while he was riding his bike. He was hit by a car which resulted in a broken upper jaw and several broken teeth. The jaw was operated on and the prognosis is good. The upper jaw is quick to heal and he will be ready to carry out his testing duties and, race but he will have missed one or two weeks of training.
2021 F1 Alpine: New Racing Director
Management wise, Alpine have signed up Davide Brivio as Racing Director. Brivio was team boss of Suzuki’s MOTO GP team but has no Formula 1 experience. That said, his job is to manage the people and processes, not to design the car. It will take him time to settle in and his influence is unlikely to be felt until next year. It was an unexpected, some would say unplanned, appointment but his MOTO GP pedigree is strong having won World Championships with Yamaha and more recently with Suzuki last year. Renault are hoping that Brivio can bring some of this magic to the newly rebranded Alpine team.
He accomplished great results with much fewer resources than bigger rivals. Clearly, Renault see themselves in a similar position. They cannot match Mercedes or Ferrari in terms of resources for their F1 project and want Brivio do make the proverbial silk purse from a sow’s ear. With big regulation changes coming next year, combined with the cost cap, it could be a very shrewd move. Both his Yamaha and Suzuki teams operated out of sites in Japan and Italy, so he is used to operating a two-site team, useful with Alpine being, for now, a Franco-English outfit.
More Changes
Alpine have followed up this appointment with announcing the departure of Cyril Abiteboul who has been with the team since leaving university and was first appointed Executive Director in 2010. It was expected that he would be made CEO following the appointment of Brivio, so this was something of a surprise and a big negative in the terms of continuity. Further changes include Laurent Rossi, director of strategy and business development at Renault, being appointed as the CEO of Alpine. Rossi will take charge of Alpine cars, its F1 team and other motorsport activities. He will report directly to Luca de Meo, Renault’s CEO. It was expected that Abiteboul’s position will be taken by Marcin Budkowski but instead the role will be split between Brivio and Budkowski as executive director.
Not having one person to head up the team is unique which does beg the question, will it work? Time will tell, but Alpine must lose marks for a lack of continuity.
2021 F1 Alpine Location Issues
Alpine are also hamstrung by having their operations split between sites in France and England. Now that the UK has left the EU, and more importantly, a customs union, movement of parts between the two are at the mercy of how well goods can move through the ports etc. So far, that seems to be a nightmare. F1 operations move at a great pace and having parts stuck at customs is a real problem. In the long term, would Alpine be better served moving everything to France?
Alpine’s carry over driver from 2020, Esteban Ocon, had credited Abiteboul with helping him through a difficult return to F1 last year. Abiteboul was very supportive of his driver, reassuring him of his future at the team. With that support gone, Ocon is flying solo again. It will be interesting to see how his relationship with Alonso works out. Partnering a two-time world champion will not be easy. If he is put in the shade by the Spaniard, Ocon’s confidence could take a battering.
A major managerial shake up and a driver line-up change? That is a bit of a worry for me. The last-minute nature of the changes and the expanse of the changes confused me a bit. Is Alonso there for the long term? Will Ocon feel secure and indeed, did either driver have any idea of the changes?
However, the changes have clearly been made with 2022 and beyond in mind. That does not bode well for 2021 which now looks like another rebuilding year.
Car Launch
The 2021 F1 Alpine new car launch can be summed up with ‘Oh, pretty colours!’. Gone are the traditional yellow and black colours of Renault. In comes the red, white and blue colours of the French flag (and British). It does look very smart.
Like all the cars launched this year, the A521 is largely a carry over from last years Renault. It just looks very different thanks to the fancy paint job. The aerodynamics have been refined and the power unit upgraded. The Renault power unit will be unique to this car as McLaren have moved to the Mercedes power units. This means less data generated and this could be seen as another negative.
It is hard to get too excited about 2021 F1 Alpine’s prospects. There has been far too much change for my liking, and most of it quite late in the day. That suggests that Renault/Alpine are, like everyone else, really looking at 2022 and this season is just a chance to get everything bedded in place for next year. However, they have a lot more bedding in to do than most.
Reasonably Competitive Last Season
Getting Alonso back in Formula 1 is exciting. He is a driver who can drag the very best results from any car he drives. Will his ability be enough to move Alpine higher up the Constructor’s table? Renault finished in fifth place last year and scored three podium finishes. So, the car is reasonably competitive in the midfield. They finished just 23 points behind McLaren in third place and are in the hunt for that third place once again.
The big question is, will Fernando Alonso be enough to make the difference, especially against the backdrop of the very large numbers of changes made managerially? He has been out of the loop for a while now and it is likely he will take a little time to get back to his best. At 39 years old, is his best still what it was?
Alpine is a team that that has more question marks than any other on the grid this year. For that reason, I expect them to struggle to improve on fifth place. Is Alonso that much better than the departed Daniel Ricciardo? It was the Aussie who scored 112 of Renaults 181 points last year. Alonso is a good replacement but to really improve their chances of making third place, Alpine should perhaps have looked to have secured the services of Perez or Hulkenberg to join him, rather than stick with the rather limited abilities of Ocon in the second seat. The attraction of having a French driver in a French car was obviously bigger than securing the services of the best drivers available.
