I understand that they want to give some F1 credentials to their revived Alpine brand, but not the way they did it.
Car branded teams nowadays tend to have a distinctive colour.
Ferrari? Red
McLaren? Orange/Papaya
Mercedes? Silver (now black)
Aston? Green
Renault? Yellow
First year, it was fine. They had a beautiful blue livery with French accents.
Blue is a bit random in F1, as a lot of teams use/ have used it traditionally. Alpine had a chromish tint to it that made it kind of special though.
After that, they partnered with BWT and this is when they traded money for recognition. First races had the pink cars that are just Racing Point to the casual viewers and then they settled for an unpleasant mix of pink/blue which makes them look like a customer team.
Add to this the constant battle to be more than a semi- succesful midfield car and you have a really weak brand.
The only team that I care less about are Alpha Tauri, who seem to be just there so the grid does not feel empty.
Marko said they’re dropping AlphaTauri name since it isn’t really helping the clothing brand anyway but there hasn’t been news on the new team name yet
Autosport podcast “confirmed” that it won’t go back to Torro Rosso though. Which I think is a mistake. It’s the perfect name for the Italian baby Red Bull
Don’t care about the name. Just want the 2004 yellow and blue back.
I wish it would just be “Renault Alpine F1”.
I 100% understand why they did go with Alpine - they’re trying to revive an old prestige name for their brand to sell more upmarket sports cars than they can under the Renault brand. They’re trying to raise the public image of their Alpine brand through F1, not the other way around.
Even with the Alpine name on the cars, they’re struggling to convince people it’s not a Renault. The A110 is a wonderful car. But it’s also 60,000+ euro for the base model and a “big boy toy”. At that price point, I’ve heard many prospective buyers indicate that they’d rather own a Porsche Cayman.
Renault as a brand has been broken as well, since the turbo hybrid era.
I just want to see their hot hatches make it to the States. The US doesn’t have a great hot hatch scene and it’s really unfortunate, because there are a lot of parts of the country where they’d be perfect (see: most cities).
A lot of people don’t feel safe in hot hatches while sharing roads with 9 foot tall, 18ft long, trucks and suvs that are endemic in the states. In most new trucks you can’t even see if a child runs out within 50ft of your truck
It’s a real struggle. I’m a sedan boy through and through, and it’s getting harder and harder. Especially since where I live is pretty much all new construction (including my house TBF) and nothing is designed with small car sight-lines in mind anymore. Parking lots are treacherous because I’m always sandwiched between two monstrosities and can’t see anything trying to get out of a parking spot, and for some insane reason my car doesn’t have any cross-traffic monitoring/alerts.
I’m meh on it either way. They can get rid of Otmar though, that’d be cool 😆
