The resignation of Luca de Meo as CEO of Renault Group has cast fresh doubt over the future of the Alpine F1 Team.
Owned by Renault but run under the name of its boutique sports car brand, Alpine, the Enstone operation’s future has long been the subject of intense speculation.
Alpine F1 future under a cloud after Renault boss exit
On Sunday evening, during the Canadian Grand Prix, Renault announced that de Meo had resigned from the organisation, departing entirely in mid-July 2025. The timing was curious, suggesting control of the message had been lost and the car company was working feverishly to stay ahead of the news.
It was also a surprise, with de Meo leaving the automotive sector to join Kering, a luxury group that owns brands such as Gucci and Cartier, among a raft of others.
He’d been at the helm of Renault since January 2020, having spent the bulk of his professional life to that point working within the Volkswagen and Fiat Groups. De Meo’s career began at Renault, though he also had a spell with Toyota.
During his time at the VW Group, he became president of Seat in November 2015. He worked alongside Formula One Management’s Stefano Domenicali, who’d joined Audi in 2014 (where he was engaged to run a feasibility study into a future F1 project) before becoming CEO at Lamborghini in March 2016.
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The pair had history prior to that, with Fiat a sponsor of Ferrari at a time when Domenicali was the team principal of the Scuderia and de Meo chief marketing officer of Fiat Group.
De Meo also played a key role in Domenicali succeeding Chase Carey as CEO of Formula One Management in 2021, nominating the Italian for the job as F1 navigated a period of uncertainty during the previous round of Concorde Agreement negotiations, and the lack of succession planning beyond Carey.
As well as working to install Domenicali in the top job, de Meo rebranded Renault’s F1 effort as Alpine as part of his efforts to place a sharper focus on the French manufacturer’s smaller brands, which also include Dacia – a company he headed before stepping up to head Renault Group.
Renaming the team Alpine was widely criticised at the time given its lack of relevance, arguably one of several missteps Renault’s outgoing CEO made with the F1 team.
Another was the appointment of Laurent Rossi, brought in with much fanfare and appointed Alpine CEO, but whose contribution proved hugely costly as the F1 operation lurched from one crisis to another.
Under Rossi’s tenure, Oscar Piastri was allowed to slip from the squad’s grasp in a highly embarrassing incident, executive director Marcin Budkowski was sacked, and he laid out an entirely unrealistic ‘100 race’ plan to return Alpine to winning ways.
He was moved aside in July 2023 onto ‘special projects’, though only a week later the highly credentialled duo of Otmar Szafnauer (team principal) and Alan Permane (sporting director) elected to jump before they could be pushed as senior management at Renault seemed hell-bent on the ‘100 race’ concept.
That left Bruno Famin in charge, though his tenure was similarly short: from July 2023 until August 2024.
Now, Flavio Briatore in charge by default, the 75-year-old Italian appointed by de Meo to steady the ship left behind by Rossi’s mid-2023 departure.
His impact was swift, working with de Meo to shut down Renault’s F1 power unit programme.
An unsuccessful engine in the current era, the call was made in late 2024 to transform Alpine into a customer team from 2026.
It’s a seismic shift that did much to trim the fat in terms of the car manufacturer’s financial exposure in F1, with de Meo suggesting the programme was costing $290 million annually.
That’s despite costs being capped under the 2026 regulations, and interest from Andretti, which had signed a deal for Renault power as part of its early efforts to join the F1 grid, only for that option to expire (and not be renewed).
In 2023, Renault sold a 24 per cent stake in the Alpine F1 team to an investment group, further reducing its exposure in a deal that valued the operation at around $900 million. According to Sportico, the squad’s value had risen to $1.5 billion by late 2024.
Briatore’s appointment, the closure of the power unit programme, and the sale of a stake in the organisation have all been considered forerunners to the formal sale of the F1 operation.
It’s a point de Meo rejected, insisting the team is a valuable part of Renault’s broader financial strategy.
“It contributes to the financial valuation of the group,” he told L’Equipe last year.
“When I was presented with the F1 activity, it was a cost line in the marketing budget.
“I have already crystallised $1 billion in value.
“That’s not bad, right? It also helps to value Renault’s stock. So there is no question of selling the family jewels.”
But without de Meo at the helm, there are significant questions that have been raised; the team’s immediate future chief among them.
The squad is without a team principal, while Briatore’s role is also in doubt, given that he was appointed as an advisor to a man who will soon depart Renault. It’s also been suggested that his arrangement affords him enticing commercial incentives.
“Nothing changed for me,” Briatore insisted to Reuters when quizzed about the impact of de Meo’s exit.
“Not for me or the team. And congratulations to Luca on his new job.”
It’s believed Briatore is unable, and unwilling, to be appointed into a formal team leadership role owing to his history within the sport, when he was found to have manipulated the results of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
He was handed a life ban from F1 by the FIA in the wake of the Crashgate scandal that followed, which a French court subsequently overturned.
While the ban was overturned, Briatore’s name has been tarnished ever since, and his presence within Alpine has therefore been controversial since he was formally announced last June.
Meanwhile, the squad is on the hunt for a new team principal, with PlanetF1.com exclusively revealing Steve Nielsen was the leading contender for the job.
The ex-Enstone man has spent time with F1 as its sporting director, after a brief stint with the FIA that ended under a cloud, such that there are question marks over whether he would be approved for a formal role.
It paints a bleak picture for the team: leaderless, stripped of assets, sold off in pieces by a car company on the brink of significant change. All the while, rumours that the squad is for sale persist.
The closure of the engine programme is significant as it makes the squad more palatable and affordable both to acquire and sustain, while also affording a new owner the opportunity to mould it in their own view. But is it worth the $1.5 million price tag?
It has habitually underperformed; its last success of note came at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix; it hasn’t been a title contender for two decades. Only through good fortune did it rise above eighth in last year’s Constructors’ Championship courtesy of a fluked result at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix that saw second and third for Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, respectively.
This year, the squad languishes at the bottom of the standings with a paltry 11 points from 10 races.
Should that continue, it will take a financial hit going into 2026, with prize money payments linked to its finishing position in the preceding year’s championship. Renault could therefore be expected to tip even more money in to keep its ailing F1 operation afloat, a project it has worked hard to limit its expenditure on across an extended period.
De Meo leaves behind a bleak looking F1 project, one primed for a sale. That, however, will be a decision that falls to his successor, with four names linked with the role – three from within Renault, Denis Le Vot, Philippe Krief, and Thierry Pieton, in addition to Maxime Picat from Stellantis.
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