Why Briatore’s Alpine return was dependent on Mercedes power

Returning to Enstone months before Renault decided to shut down its F1 engine project, Flavio Briatore has revealed that his “one condition” to rejoin the team was “to have a Mercedes-Benz engine”.

Briatore, who won World titles with Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso under the Renault branding, returned to Enstone mid-2024 as an “executive advisor”, a role that has since expanded as he is now also the de facto team principal.

Flavio Briatore had ‘only one condition’ to rejoin the Enstone team

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His arrival at the team came just months before Renault announced that its Formula 1 power unit department would cease operating at the end of 2025.

It was a decision that was in the making before Briatore made his comeback, with discussions already taking place.

With that in mind, Briatore says he told Renault CEO Luca de Meo he would rejoin the Enstone outfit, but only if it did a deal to replace the Renault power unit with a Mercedes engine.

Alpine announced a few months later that it would join the list of Mercedes’ customers in F1 2026, in time for the introduction of Formula 1’s all-new engine formula.

“The moment when Luca de Meo was talking about joining the team, [there was] only one condition for me to join the team, which was to have a Mercedes-Benz engine. There was no plan B, it was only one plan,” Briatore said as per Motorsport.com.

“I wanted a Mercedes-Benz engine completely.

“There was only one way to come back, because in this moment, you need to be with the best people.

“And the people of Mercedes, we started working together and it was promising. It’s surprising, the ways that the people [at Mercedes] are collaborating with us. It’s a super, super relationship. This is what we’re looking for.

“I wanted to have the discussion with the best. With the second best, no interest.”

Mercedes, who won the championship double with McLaren last year, powered the works team to seven Drivers’ titles and eight Constructors’ in the turbocharged V6 era before adding a further two Constructors’ titles with McLaren, as well the 2025 Drivers’ title.

This season Mercedes’ power unit is being tipped to be the one to beat with pundits predicting Brixworth will build on its 2014 know-how with the all-new units.

Mercedes is also said to have found a loophole in the wording of the engine regulations that could hand the Mercedes-powered teams a four-tenths of a second advantage per lap.

Relating to the compression ratio, which is set at 16:1 when measured in ambient conditions, Mercedes, and also Red Bull-Ford, have allegedly found a way to run the engines at a higher ratio on track.

Briatore is relishing the opportunity to see his Alpine cars powered by a competitive engine after Renault’s well-publicised deficit in recent years.

“At every race, I asked [how much our deficit would be],” said the Italian. “This race? Four tenths. This race? 3.5 tenths, This race? Five tenths. And last year in three tenths we had 14 cars.

“At least when I arrive to the race, I will not ask anymore how many tenths we have in disadvantage. Nobody is talking about engine anymore. Nobody is talking about gearbox anymore. At least we have two issues we don’t need to care about.”

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