Flavio Briatore, once again all-powerful at Alpine: "If you have speed and you hit the wall, it's no use"

Flavio Briatore has long been hailed as the "playboy of Formula 1." Under his leadership, his teams (Benneton and Renault) and drivers (German Michael Schumacher and Spaniard Fernando Alonso) won seven world championship titles. That was until 2009, when the "Crashgate" incident, which occurred the previous year in Singapore (where he had asked one of his drivers, Nelson Piquet Jr., to deliberately cause an accident to favor the other, in this case Alonso), led to his departure.

After a long hiatus away from the Italian's paddocks, Renault boss Luca de Meo has made official the return of Flavio Briatore to a position as special advisor at Alpine in June 2024. A Monegasque resident and businessman, the controversial and charismatic 75-year-old Italian tells Le Monde about his obsession with victory, on the sidelines of the Monaco Grand Prix, which takes place on Sunday at 3 p.m. "In 2026, we can win races. And, in 2027, we're preparing for the world championship," he assures us - even if his team is not playing a leading role this season -, returning to a reinvigorated Formula 1 and more in the spotlight.

Before, the press's view of F1 was technical. We could have put journalists in engineers' outfits! It wasn't very exciting. With Benetton, we started to change that, by inviting the "lifestyle" press. Then, Red Bull and others continued the movement. The media attention paid to F1 is totally different. So [on Wednesday] I attended a private screening of Brad Pitt's F1 film [in Monaco, with the drivers and some team principals] . It's great.

In the past, I tried to develop F1. I understood that to find major sponsors, you didn't just have to be an engine manufacturer, but also have a glamorous image. With Benetton and Renault, we found very important sponsors, and I remember that the engineers were reluctant to this idea. They told me: "You shouldn't have too many sponsors, because the stickers you stick on the car are too heavy!" We were the first to have someone who dealt exclusively with marketing. Today, it's almost the opposite excess, as the marketing teams are so extensive.

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