Gucci’s £115m F1 deal with team name change and new livery colours | F1 | Sport
In 2027, the team will race under a new name, confirmed as being the ‘Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team’ in a press release circulated on Wednesday. It was also state that the team will “compete in Gucci colours”, meaning a goodbye to the blue-and-pink colour scheme that has been used on their cars in recent years.
The deal, which is understood to run until 2030 and is believed to be worth more than £115million in sponsorship revenue to Alpine over that period, per The Race, will see the newly-created Gucci Racing brand feature heavily on the 2027 car.
Gucci’s black and gold colours are likely to form much of the base colour palette, with scope for some red and green accents too. While the pink will definitely be gone, as that is the colour brought to the table by outgoing title sponsor BWT, “a little blue” is set to remain so that Alpine’s corporate colours are on show, chief executive Philippe Krief said.
Gucci are set to go further and also create their own team kit for staff and mechanics and even racing overalls for the Alpine drivers. Demna Gvasalia, Gucci’s creative director, is set to be involved in the project himself. British company Castore is the current team kit supplier and so, given Gucci’s intentions, it seems that deal is also set to conclude at the end of this year.
Team boss Flavio Briatore has conquered the world with a team named after a fashion brand before, having led Benetton to title success in the 1990s. He is out to do it again but, even despite their impressive improvement on track this season, knows there is much more work needed on that front. ” We need to be pushing hard in the factory. We need better quality people. We have not achieved what I want,” he said.
“I’m missing a few quality people with experience, because the team is still very young. Our job is to make the car competitive. It’s as simple as that. If you don’t have the car competitive then whatever press conference you are doing, it will only be an excuse. We don’t want excuses. We want to be competitive.”
A 24 percent stake in the team is known to be for sale as investment firm Otro Capital looks to cash out, but majority owners Renault insist there is no truth to any rumours that the team might be being prepped for a sale. Krief said: “We are keeping the majority because it’s part of the plan of Alpine to continue in F1. It’s still part of our plan to push in F1 with the Alpine brand, because we need to do it. It’s part of the big story.”
