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BARCELONA, Spain — Through the intensity of their on-track competition and the constant need to develop and improve, Formula One teams cannot afford to stand still.
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It’s admirable, the way they’re always thinking about how they can get better and be better, never giving a second of thought to what has been and gone. In the car development race, it is the only way of operating.
But on Friday in Spain, some of the sport’s biggest names applied that same mentality to a controversial appointment by the struggling Alpine team, which announced that Flavio Briatore would be returning as an executive advisor for its F1 project.
The messaging from Alpine F1 chief Bruno Famin is that Briatore’s wealth of experience in the sport and knowledge would be invaluable, especially as the team goes through its current rebuild. “He knows how to operate a winning team,” Famin said. “He has a very good record and quite a number of world titles, and he will bring this experience, this fighting spirit, to the team.”
Briatore, 74, once turned the Enstone-based team into world champions, initially as Benetton with Michael Schumacher in 1994 and 1995 before going back-to-back again with Fernando Alonso in 2005 and 2006, when the team was Renault.
Yet that isn’t what Briatore is remembered for in F1.
Instead, it is for his role in the ‘Crashgate’ race fixing scandal at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, one of the bleakest moments in recent F1 history, that initially resulted in a lifetime ban from motorsport.
‘Crashgate’ saw Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr deliberately crash in the inaugural Singapore race to bring out a safety car that would help Alonso win the race. Piquet revealed the conspiracy a year later, after being dropped by Renault midway through 2009. Off the back of an FIA investigation, Renault accepted that Briatore and the team’s technical chief, Pat Symonds, were “involved in the conspiracy.” Both left the team.
The FIA gave Briatore a lifetime ban from its championships, claiming he was “complicit” but that he continued to “deny his participation in the breach despite all the evidence.” Symonds was handed a five-year ban after accepting his role in the conspiracy with “eternal regret and shame.”
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Both bans were ultimately overturned, with Briatore appealing the ruling in the French courts and suing the FIA for damages before reaching an out-of-court settlement. He ultimately accepted responsibility in his role as Renault’s F1 managing director, but always denied any personal involvement. Symonds quickly returned to senior technical roles in F1, becoming one of the key architects of the technical regulations while working for F1 itself in recent years ahead of an upcoming move to Andretti’s project upon the completion of his gardening leave.
Briatore has never been far from F1, even without taking up a formal role in the last 15 years. He regularly attended grands prix and has remained close to a number of the drivers and team principals. He even played a role in helping Azerbaijan get a place on the F1 calendar from 2016.
But this fully-fledged return is different. Assuming his role is similar to that of other advisors through the F1 paddock, such as Helmut Marko at Red Bull and the late Niki Lauda at Mercedes, Briatore will be heavily involved at Alpine, whose announcement made clear his scope will be a wide one.
Briatore told Sky Sports in the Barcelona paddock on Friday that he’d been speaking with Renault CEO Luca de Meo for “two or three months” about the position. “Finally I feel I have the motivation to do it,” Briatore said. “I feel that it’s possible to do it, I feel that it’s possible to make the team again in the right direction, to perform. This is why I like it, to go back (to) the competition.”
Flavio is back. And despite all that happened, not a single person within F1 has yet openly or publicly balked at the idea of a man who once helped fixed a grand prix returning in such a position.
“I don’t really mind about the past,” said Famin, without acknowledging the reference to Singapore in the question. “I am always looking at the future, and looking at what we can get and to get our team better.” Famin then went on to talk up Briatore’s knowledge and how he’d help Alpine improve.
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Even Alpine’s rivals didn’t seem bothered. Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, said he thought “we need to give a chance to recover from the situations.” He too vouched for Briatore’s knowledge and experience, saying they have a “friendly relationship.” In February of this year, Briatore posted a picture on Instagram of him and Wolff having coffee in Monaco.
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“I think everybody deserves the opportunity to come back,” Wolff added. “For me, for sure, having another clever mind in Alpine, someone that is able to simplify things and apply common sense is in any case, where Alpine today is, is a benefit.”
“We know the story,” added Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur. “And I think he paid the price for this. If now he’s allowed to come back, he can come back.”
The overriding message is that it doesn’t matter what has happened in the past, that so long as there’s a benefit to F1 now, then it’s OK. That having another smart person in the room, regardless of their involvement in such an unsavory case in F1’s history and all the reputational damage involved, makes everything fine. Time to move on. Let’s not think about the past.
But the shadow of Crashgate lingers. For almost a year, Felipe Massa has been pursuing an $80 million lawsuit against Formula One Management and the FIA as well as F1’s former CEO, Bernie Ecclestone, over the events he claims cost him that year’s world championship, given he was leading the race at the time of Piquet’s crash. It’s a case that only looks set to rumble on and on.
Famin may have claimed he is “looking ahead, not backwards” with the appointment of Briatore. But for all the experience, knowledge and smarts Alpine’s new advisor may bring, the baggage is going to be impossible to drop — no matter how much those in F1 embrace his return.
(Lead photo of Flavio Briatore in 2023: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)