‘Floundering, embarrassing’ Alpine branded ‘wide open for a sale’ by Eddie Jordan

Former team boss Eddie Jordan believes Alpine are “wide open for a sale” after a dismal start to the F1 2024 season, claiming the Renault-owned outfit are “embarrassing to watch.”

Alpine sit bottom of the Constructors’ Championship with no points from the first two races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, with the A524 car proving both overweight and underpowered.

Eddie Jordan blasts ‘disgraceful’ Alpine

The Enstone team’s poor start to the season comes after a chaotic 2023 campaign rocked by internal politics, which saw team principal Otmar Szafnauer and long-serving sporting director Alan Permane brutally sacked during the Belgian Grand Prix weekend at Spa.

Despite an initial upturn in results following the ousting of Szafnauer, which saw Pierre Gasly finish on the podium in the Spa sprint race and the Dutch Grand Prix either side of the summer break, Jordan believes it was a “mistake” to let the former Aston Martin boss leave.

And he believes Gasly and team-mate Esteban Ocon will both be looking for a way out at the end of 2024, claiming Renault’s disinterest in the project makes the team a likely contender to be sold in the near future.

Speaking via the Formula For Success podcast, Jordan commented: “I think they got rid of Otmar prematurely. I think that was a mistake.

“I think he’s a talented person who certainly knew how to keep that team in the right direction and the results that they had very soon after they let him go were indicative of where somebody had left a platform of a style of management that they could embrace.

“At the moment, they are the most floundering team. It is absolutely embarrassing. I find it embarrassing to watch.

“Gasly and Ocon are capable of winning races. With Alpine in the current vision, do I see them there next year? Absolutely not. Not a chance.

“I think it’s wide open for a sale. I think Renault have pulled back from it. They don’t want to spend the money on the engines and the engine for 2026 is such a big outlay in terms of development or cost, it’s frightening them even though the value of the team [is high]. They all talk about a billion pounds for a team.

“I just feel that Alpine have been disgraceful in terms of not being able to perform for their drivers, for their team.

“To give them that car for which to compete in a World Championship is just unacceptable. Unacceptable.

“I wouldn’t put up with it. It’s shocking.”

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Jordan’s co-host, the former McLaren and Red Bull driver David Coulthard, pointed to a lack of leadership within the team following Szafnauer’s departure.

He added: “I find they’re a little bit faceless. I don’t really know who’s running the show.”

Speaking following the season opener in Bahrain, Szafnauer pinned the blame for Alpine’s poor start to 2024 on bad decisions made by those at the top of the team.

He told Viaplay: “The stopwatch doesn’t lie and it didn’t look very competitive.

“I do understand that. People at the highest level making not-so-good decisions, firing people and not creating psychological safety in a team, that’s a result that happens thereafter.

“But I get it, it’s a hard game, Formula 1. You have to do a lot of things right and if you get some of them wrong, it bites you.

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