(Montmeló) Italian Flavio Briatore, former boss of the Benetton and Renault teams in the 1990s and 2000s, has been appointed “executive advisor” by Alpine, the Franco-British Formula 1 team said in a statement on Friday.
“Alpine F1 Team confirms that Flavio Briatore has been appointed by Luca de Meo, CEO of the Renault group, as executive advisor for the Formula 1 division,” announced the press release published on the sidelines of the Spanish Grand Prix.
“Briatore will primarily focus on the team’s high-level activities, including: finding top talent and analyzing the driver market, challenging the existing project through evaluation of the current structure and providing of advice on certain strategic issues in the field of sport,” explains Alpine.
The official announcement of Briatore’s unexpected return after 15 years of absence confirms the rumour that had been growing in the paddock since the end of May.
The 74-year-old Italian, one of the strong men of F1 for around twenty years, was dismissed by the Franco-British team after the “crashgate” scandal which broke out at the end of the summer 2009.
During the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, held on September 28 on the city-state’s street circuit, the transalpine leader asked Brazilian driver Nelson Piquet Jr to deliberately cause an accident in order to help his Spanish teammate Fernando Alonso, who was was unaware of the deception, to win the race.
Deemed responsible for planning this cheating, Briatore was fired by Renault on September 16, 2009, before being banned for life five days later by the International Automobile Federation (FIA), which regulates Formula 1.
The Italian then challenged this sanction before the French civil courts, which won his case in early 2010 by deeming this lifelong ban to be irregular.
Briatore allowed the Benetton team, which he managed from 1989 to 1997, to win two drivers’ world titles thanks to the German Michael Schumacher (1994, 1995), as well as a constructors’ crown (1995).
Pushed out at the end of 1997, he returned to Formula 1 two years later when Renault bought Benetton. Director of the French team from 2000 until his dismissal in September 2009, he won two consecutive doubles in the drivers’ and constructors’ world championships in 2005 and 2006 thanks to Alonso.
This arrival comes in a tense context at Alpine, which is having a disastrous start to the season with only five points scored in 9 Grands Prix and tensions between its two French drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. The latter, who hit his teammate in Monaco, will leave the team at the end of the year.