Jun.7 (GMM) Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo insists the Alpine team is not for sale.
Last year, a sizeable chunk of the team was sold to a group of investors, amid a period of personnel turmoil and the subsequent performance slump in 2024.
It ramped up speculation that Alpine could be the perfect team for the hopeful Andretti-Cadillac operation to buy.
“I want to make this very clear,” de Meo told Autocar. “There is no way we are going to give up. We will not sell even a part of this thing.”
The common perception in the paddock is that even the smallest and most uncompetitive teams on the grid are now valued in excess of US $1 billion.
“I’ve had people making offers left and right,” de Meo said, “then talking in the press about it. But we’re not interested. It would be stupid and I won’t do it.”
However, he admits that Alpine’s current problems are so deep that “there will be more” departures of key staff members to follow shortly.
De Meo thinks the team’s problems can be traced all the way back to the start of the hybrid engine era (2014), when “things went wrong” with Renault’s power unit.
“And this year we’ve screwed up with the car,” he said. “If you combine everything, we’re up to 1.5 seconds from where we need to be.
“For this year and 2025, we will try with the current setup, then push to get things right for the next cycle. I don’t think we deserve to be a top team at present, but we’re not in F1 to be tourists so we need to work hard.”