Flavio Briatore, Alpine’s Disgrace In The Hole

Alpine recently named Formula 1 bad boy and sometimes outcast Flavio Briatore as executive advisor. If you live under a rock and/or are oblivious to earthshaking F1 controversies of yesteryear, then maybe you didn’t hear about it. If you did hear about it, and have a modicum of ethical standards, then you were probably appalled by the development. 

There was surprisingly very little protest when Alpine announced that Briatore was (re-)joining the organization on June 21st. It appeared Briatore was welcomed back to F1 with open arms. Which is the exact opposite of what you’d expect since he was dragged away from the sport with his arms exactly the opposite of open: held close together by handcuffs.

Save for the last two races (Alpine placed ninth and 10th in both the Canadian and Spanish GPs), Alpine has been in shambles this season. Outside of those two races, Alpine has scored only two points. Their drivers, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, barely tolerate each other. Ocon’s erratic driving and equally erratic behavior have pushed Alpine to seek his replacement. Money invested in the team from the likes of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney has failed to make an impact. Reynolds and McElhenney are, of course, the men behind the reality show “Welcome To Wrexham.” The joke in the Alpine paddock is that the Alpine engine builders and Ocon should have their own reality show called “We Build ‘Em, He Wrexham.”

In any case, Alpine needed radical change. And hiring Briatore, whose rap sheet includes two cheating scandals (one when he was managing director at Benetton (also backed by Renault) in 1994, and the other the infamous race-fixing scandal that took place at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, when Briatore ‘allegedly’ asked Nelson Piquet, Jr. to deliberately crash in order to help Renault teammate Fernando Alonso) was indeed radical. The latter scandal earned Briatore a lifetime ban from F1 – or maybe not.