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< PreviousThird time around for veteran Italian to revive team Forgive and forget as Briatore returns to Renault to rescue Alpine F lavio Briatore has made a glorious return to the Enstone headquarters of his old Benetton/Renault team now called Alpine Racing. After weeks of rumours, it was finally confirmed that the 74-year-old is to return as Executive Adviser to the Alpine team. Briatore has been re-appointed as effective boss of the team by Luca de Meo, chief executive of Renault, to sort out the muddle the team has become since Bruno Famin took over as team principal. Alpine issued a short and sweet press release to announce Briatore’s appointment which read: “Flavio Briatore will predominantly focus on top level areas of the team including: scouting top talents and providing insights on the driver market, challenging the existing project by assessing the current structure and advising on some strategic matters within the sport.” Apparently Famin was not consulted about the appointment and only knew about it shortly before it was announced, although it had been rumoured for weeks. The team has been through a period of management turmoil in the last year ever since Famin was appointed. His first move was to sack incumbent Otmar Szafnauer. Every move he has made since, has been labelled “stupid” by commentators. The only bright spot has been the “shotgun” appointment of David Sanchez as the new technical director. Sanchez has had a “magical” effect on the team’s fortunes. According to Autosport magazine, since Famin arrived he has sacked the incumbent team principal, sporting director, technical director, head of aerodynamics, operations director and engineering consultant. Unsurprisingly Alpine slipped from fifth fastest team to slowest team in that period, until it began its recovery under Sanchez. De Meo’s new plan is to is restructure the team under Famin. But few expect Famin to survive long under Briatore. The return of Briatore to the team has been long predicted and it is his third coming to Enstone. He first came in 1988 and he quickly ousted incumbent team principal, Peter Collins (see profile of Collins which starts on Page 86). He left the then named Benetton in 1997 but came back again in 2000 when it was renamed Renault, leaving again in 2009 and 2024 is the third time has been appointed to run the team. His return marks a so-called rehabilitation following 2008 Singapore scandal, although in reality he has never been away acting as Fernando Alonso’s manager and more recently as special adviser to Formula 1 Group chief executive, Stefano Domenicali. Whatever his reputation, Briatore has always been one of Formula One’s top managers. He has four world championships to his name in 1994, 1995, 2005 and 2006 and is the eighth most successful team principals of all time with four drivers, titles and three constructors’ titles. His teams have won 46 Grands Prix, 32 pole positions, 140 podiums and 41 fastest laps and scored 1,479.5 points in his illustrious career. Briatore’s return to Enstone comes 14 years after he was ignominiously sacked as Renault’s team principal when he masterminded a cover up after Pat Symonds’s the team’s technical director conspired to fix the result of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. Symonds concocted a plan to allow Fernando Alonso to win the race for Renault by getting his team mate and number two driver Nelsinho Piquet to deliberately crash his car on lap 15 of the race close to the expected pit window for the car’s first pit stop. Piquet’s Renault crashed at turn 17, necessitating an immediate safety car deployment. Alonso had previously made an early pitstop and was promoted to the race lead. His car had been under fuelled at the start which made everyone suspicious. Briatore was unaware of Symonds’s plan and did not authorise or condone it but as soon as he learned of it, he went to great lengths to cover it up. The race fix and the cover up were discovered a year later after Piquet was sacked by the team and he went to the Federation Internationale de L’Automobile as a whistle-blower. President Max Mosley banned both Symonds and Briatore for life from motorsport although that was eventually shortened to five-year bans. Flavio Briatore has made a glorious return to the Alpine team at Enstone. News BusinessF1 10New tunnel is no cakewalk as team struggles to do everything Aston Martin suffers a repeat of its 2023 problems as it commissions new windtunne l A ston Martin Racing is having major problems trying to finish off and complete construction of its windtunnel and getting started on the process of calibration. The chaos surrounding the completion of the tunnel is having a major effect on its 2024 season, just as the move to its new factory destroyed its form in the second half of the 2023 season. Construction of the new tunnel is actually ahead of schedule, but the effort going into it is sucking all energy out of the Formula One development programme according to insiders. As one said: “This has been no cakewalk.” Dan Fallows, the team’s technical director has been putting a lot of effort into coordinating construction of the tunnel, which has inevitably taken attention away from the Formula One programme. The situation is complicated in that the tunnel is truly state of the art and bristling with the latest measuring technology. Another insider said: “The decline in performance at the team certainly correlates the effort being put out by the technical staff into the new wind tunnel.” The same insider added: “There is a certain desperation to get the wind tunnel commissioned and these things can’t be hurried. As many as 20 different external contractors can be working on the tunnel at any one time, sometimes getting in each others way. This is a huge project for what is really a little company at heart.” The team has also been unsettled by overtures being made to Adrian Newey to effectively head the design team. There are many ex-Red Bull staffers at Aston Martin and there was some bad blood when they left two years ago. Fallows and Newey are not said to be the best of friends by people who know both men. Fallows has reportedly told friends that he does not want to work with Newey again. He is ignoring the rumours and trying to stay focused on his job, but he is clear that the tunnel is a big game changer: “It is a big change and will make a huge positive difference.” The team is currently using the Mercedes-AMG wind tunnel at Brackley, but that relationship has changed since Aston Martin announced it was ditching Mercedes-AMG engines and moving to Honda. It is not as productive as it once was. Fallows is really missing having his own wind tunnel which he enjoyed at Red Bull Racing, albeit off site. At the start of the season, he told Ian Parkes of the Speedcafe website: “Having been in an environment where you have that flexibility and then having to share a wind tunnel with somebody else, even though it’s a very good facility, it gives you so much more ability to do research projects around your normal wind tunnel development programme.” Fallows says that having a wind tunnel is vital to the process in 2024 and looking beyond to the new regulations: “It’s particularly relevant for understanding the aerodynamics of new cars, so, for example, when we go into the 2026 regulations, with them being very new, it will play an enormous part in that. It’s very exciting for us because there are a lot of projects that we’d like to be able to do, but we don’t have the time to do them in the Mercedes wind tunnel. It’ll be a big step forward for us.” The new Aston Martin wind tunnel will be finished by the end of August, ready to be Dan Fallows is desperate to get inside the new wind tunnel and utilise the state of the art technology. commissioned. But calibration could take another six months to complete. Fallows confirms: “The facility should be up and running towards the end of the year.” He added: “We have to make sure it’s absolutely right for us to be able to run our normal development programme. So we will be focused on making sure that absolutely everything is ready to go. As soon as we’re happy that it’s operating at the right spec then we’ll move our main development programme in there the sooner we can get in there, the better” And there lies the problem, as the focus goes on commissioning the wind tunnel, it inevitably comes off the development of the car which has fallen of a cliff in the second quarter of the season. Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin’s number one driver, criticised his own team for the first time since he joined 18 months ago after a desperately disappointing race in Barcelona. It was particularly disappointing because it was his home race and he could only manage to qualify eleventh and finish twelfth, outside the points. Alonso said that the team needed to: “talk less and deliver more.” Alonso has had a terrible run in the second quarter of the year as he said post-Barcelona: “We deserved not to score any points because we didn’t have the pace the whole weekend.” He pointed to a lack of grip and blamed excessive tyre degradation and said the Aston Martin AMR24 lacked downforce He complained that none of the recent upgrades had worked, but he stopped short of blaming the work on the new windtunnel for the problems. He added: “But I’m a driver, not a technician. We need to work hard, get better every race, but without too much talking or promising.” Fernando Alonso has criticised his own team for the first time and asked for less talk and more delivery. News BusinessF1 11Star making magician finally calls it a day after long career as team manager, team principal, driver manager and publisher P eter Collins, the former driver manager and team principal of the Lotus team between 1991 and 1994, has retired as Publisher of BusinessF1 magazine, a role he has held since the magazine relaunched in 2021. As Collins approaches his 75th birthday and having cashed in his substantial British pension, he has decided to retire to his Swiss home in La Heutte, the country where he has lived for the past 20 years. Over the years, since he arrived in Britain from Australia with his young bride, Jane in 1979, he has been a team manager twice for Lotus and Benetton culminating in his four years at Lotus as team principal. Afterwards he became a driver manager, briefly linking up with David Robertson to launch the career of Kimi Raikkonen. He has also played a very significant role in the careers of Nigel Mansell, Mika Hakkinen, Johnny Herbert, Jenson Button and Tonio Liuzzi. For a period of 10 years, he was regarded as the pre-eminent driver manager in Formula One. At various times in magazine profiles, he has been called “starmaker” and “the magician” for his work with drivers. He also had considerable publishing and journalistic experience when he was technical editor of Formula 1 Magazine between 2001 to 2003 and Publisher of BusinessF1 between 2021 and 2024. Publishing gave him a new dimension relatively late in life and he appeared to enjoy it. But as his 75th birthday loomed in 2025, midway through 2024, he decided he had enough of working and would retire, something his wife Jane pressured him to do, and which has pleased her immensely. His substantial British pension has enabled him to take a longer view and with some serious money in the bank for the first time in ages, Collins knew the time to wind down was right. There has been some disapproval of his decision which was very sudden, and he has been criticised for suddenly stopping and giving no notice to anyone. But it was perfect timing for him as spring turned into summer and ultimately the pleasures of walking his dogs in the green hills of Switzerland and money in the bank, dictated the timing. He has also suffered health issues which have reaffirmed the decision. Because of the sudden timing of Collins’s retirement, the position of BusinessF1’s Publisher has suddenly become vacant. Tom Rubython, editor in chief of BusinessF1 said: “We are actively looking for a replacement and the ideal person will be someone who has had a senior position around Formula One and understands communications. I am sure the perfect person is out there somewhere. We will look.” The search for a new Publisher at BusinessF1 BusinessF1 is on the search for a new Publisher for the magazine which is not a full-time position and has ambassadorial status attached to it. Tom Rubython said: “A lot of it is social and keeping an ear to the ground. A good Publisher listens but doesn’t talk much, if you know what I mean.” BusinessF1 has also been on the look out for investment to launch its daily digital news service which has been long in the planning and a new Publisher appointment would ideally coincide with this. Rubython said: “Publishing has changed, and we need a strong digital daily output to stay relevant. Everyone is struggling to get this balance between print and digital right. We’ve thought about it for three years. It is so easy to destroy your own print magazine if you get it wrong and that is the last thing we would want to do. But we would be a lot more useful with a strong daily digital output. Setting up a proper digital service is expensive and will cost about $300,000. We have had offers, but it can’t be from someone we might be writing about. From past, I know that can cause problems.” See profile of Peter Collins ‘Starmaker, the magician has sprinkled his last magic dust’ which begins on Page 86. Peter Collins was responsible for the rise of Nigel Mansell in Formula One. Brazilian star will have to look elsewhere Drugovich loses out as Stroll confirmed for years to come B razil’s top race driver, 2022 Formula 2 champion, Felipe Drugovich, currently reserve driver for Aston Martin Racing, is in limbo after Lance Stroll was confirmed as Aston Martin’s number two driver for 2025 and beyond. 24-year-old Drugovich is desperately needed in Formula One as the sport currently lacks any Brazilian participation. Team principal Mike Krack ignored Drugovich when he announced Stroll’s contract extension and said: “Lance has played a key role in building this team. His technical feedback, alongside his committed simulator work, has helped contribute to the continuous development of the car each season.” 2025 will be Stroll and Fernando Alonso’s third season as Aston Martin Racing teammates in 2025. Felipe Drugovich loses out after Lance Stroll announcement. F1 sponsor revenue declines Ferrari non-car revenues jump to $533 million F errari has revealed that its sponsorship, commercial and brand revenues generated from its non car operations were $533 million (€499m) last year an increase of $51.5 million (€48m), up 10.6 percent, from $482 million (€451m). But it also reported that Formula One sponsorship revenues were lower, due to its failure to sell its title sponsorship after Philip Morris withdrew. That deficit has now been solved by its $100 million title deal with HP (see separate story). News BusinessF1 12F errari NV, the Italian sports car maker, has revealed that the advancements in sensor technology and the huge number of sensors that now exist in every sort of car are the biggest contributor to technological advancement in a road car’s dynamic performance. John Elkann, Chairman of Ferrari, said in the latest Ferrari annual report: “Sensors and the relevant know-how built over decades contribute to the driving thrills and performance, as well as reliability and car safety.” It is very rare for a car manufacturer to highlight a particular technical advantage in an annual report, mainly concerned with finances. But Elkan and his chief executive, Benedetto Vigna, consider sensors to be the key Ferrari technical advantage over its competitors. Vigna is an electronics expert and has spent his whole life before Ferrari in that industry and is intimately familiar with the technology. Ferrari installed its first sensor on a road car in 1980 on the Ferrari 308 GTBi model. The latest Ferraris have hundreds of sensors installed including accelerometers, gyroscopes and microphones which have hugely improved vehicle dynamics and performance. Ferrari has also installed sensors that it says produce better “driving thrills.” Vigna says: “In the near future, our cars will be equipped with new sensors that will allow us to further improve the existing features and enable new functions, and that will play a fundamental role on battery management, increasing the life of the battery as well as the safety of our cars.” Ferrari’s long-term ambitions include new sensors being developed which will produce a big “step-up in performance.” Not only in pushing power but also stopping power. Ferrari braking is already improved by sensor technology but Vigna has revealed there is much more to come. He says: “Comparing a Ferrari with a 6D sensor and one without it, we have reduced our braking distance by approximately 10 percent thanks to the information collected through accelerometers, gyroscopes, and the deep control vehicle software know-how.” The powerful 6D sensor was first developed for use in high end digital cameras and is used by Canon in its 20 plus megapixel cameras. Ferrari suspensions will also benefit from increased use and sophistication of sensors as active suspension is introduced to more models. Ferrari introduced active suspension for the first time on the Purosangue SUV which applies the optimum suspension setting for every possible driving condition, important on an SUV. It keeps the Purosangue’s body at the perfect elevation over almost any surface. The sensors enable Ferrari drivers to be able to control the Purosangue’s body roll automatically in corners as well as the tyre contact patch over rougher roads. Elkann says: “By combining sensors and software, it will be possible to further improve the performance and driving thrills of our cars.” The renewed Ferrari emphasis on installing sensors in its cars should be no surprise. 55-year-old Benedetto Vigna, who is celebrating his third anniversary as Ferrari’s Chief Executive, is a physicist. After he graduated from the University of Pisa, he started working for STMicroelectronics where he invented a three-dimensional motion sensor for airbags of automobiles which was also used by Nintendo in its gaming wireless controller. In his career Vigna has been credited as the inventor on more than one hundred patent applications. Ferrari installed its first sensor on a road car in 1980 on the Ferrari 308 GTBi model. Since then sensors have proliferated. Formula One has advanced sensor development Ferrari reveals that sensors are the biggest contributor to improvements in road car dynamics John Elkann and Benedetto Vigna are installing hundreds of sensors on every Ferrari model. News BusinessF1 13Russian entrepreneur makes practical decision to end investment in the sport Mazepin gives up on son’s F1 career D mitry Mazepin, the Russian fertiliser and chemicals billionaire, who runs the Uralchem and Uralkali companies, has reportedly given up on the idea of establishing his son Nikita as a regular Formula One driver. He has made a practical decision and wants his son to focus on his education, particularly obtaining an MBA on the basis that he will one day run the family businesses. Dmitry Mazepin spent around $50 million developing his son’s career but has realised he is not going to make it in Formula One, especially not in the current environment. The decision has nothing to do with money as Mazepin’s companies are booming and highly profitable because of continuing high fertiliser prices in the wake of the Covid crisis and global shortages. Young Nikita Mazepin’s career was upended by the consequences of the world health crisis in 2021 and the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, a year later. He enjoyed one unsuccessful season racing for the HaasF1 team in 2021 during which he never finished a race higher than fourteenth and retired from five of the 21 races he competed in. After the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Haas suspended its driving contract with Mazepin, as well as cancelling Uralkali’s title sponsorship of the team for the 2022 season. Mazepin has not driven a Formula One car for two and a half years and it would now be impossible to find him a drive as Formula One booms and opportunities to buy seats in the sport diminish. They are also hampered by continuing sanctions. In 2022, both Dmitry Mazepin and Nikita Mazepin were sanctioned by the British, American and European Union authorities and banned from travelling. The younger Mazepin had some of the those bans suspended but his exact status is unclear. For safety’s sake he confines his residency to Moscow and Dubai. His only competitive motor racing has been confined to the United Arab Emirates where he competes in the Asian Le Mans racing in an Oreca- Gibson LMP2 car. His most successful season was in 2018 when he finished second in the FIA GP2 championship, scoring five wins and then in 2020 when he finished fifth in the FIA GP2 championship, scoring two wins with performances that propelled him into Formula One with the Haas F1 team for 2021. Dmitry Mazepin has also given up on his own dream of owing a Formula One team. He came very close to buying both the Force India and Williams teams but was thwarted at the last minute by offers from Lawrence Stroll for the Force India and Dorliton Capital for Williams. He is also thought to have been rebuffed when he made a bid for the HaasF1 team, which was never for sale. He also considered starting his own team in partnership with Oliver Oakes who owns the Hitech GP F2 and F3 teams. At one point Mazepin bought a majority stake in Hitech GP to further those ambitions but had to divest it when the Russia-Ukraine war started. Those ambitions are also at an end and he as no current interest in buying, or starting a team. Many people though Mazepin would have made a good team principal and were impressed by his attitude in the few interviews he gave when he was directly involved in the sport. He once said: “I would say that the human factor is half of success in Formula One. Separately and unrelated to the decision to end its Formula One ambition, Dmitry Mazepin’s Uralkali company has won its legal suit taken out in Switzerland against the Haas F1 team which will see the majority of the $13 million advance it made to the team for the 2022 season refunded. When then Haas boss Guenther Steiner cancelled Uralkali’s sponsorship deal, citing the international crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he refused to repay the $13 million Mazepin’s company Uralkali had advanced to the HaasF1 team Uralkali sued for its return in the Swiss courts, for which judgment has just been handed down. Uralkali is expected to receive an $11 million refund. Both sides sought additional compensation for the loss of the contract but were both denied by the court. Dmitry Mazepin and Nikita Mazepin: For practical reasons their Formula One ambitions are effectively over. Car designer would have liked Honda engine Barnard shows regret at leaving McLaren in 1986 J ohn Barnard, the former technical director of McLaren International, has expressed his first public regret at leaving the team at the end of 1986. The inventor of the first carbon fibre monocoque revealed in a recent interview with MotorSport magazine: “Sometime I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed at McLaren.” It is the first time Barnard has shown any regret about leaving McLaren. He subsequently joined Scuderia Ferrari and designed the Ferrari 640 car with the first semi automatic gearbox controlled by paddle shift levers each side of the steering column. The car won its first race in the hands of Nigel Mansell. Barnard has recalled the process that saw him leave McLaren: “Towards the end of 1984 I decided that I wanted to cash in my McLaren shares. Teddy Mayer and Tyler Alexander had gone. Ron and I both had 43 percent of the shares. Creighton Brown had the remaining 14 percent.” Barnard added by way of explanation: “I’m not a risk taker. I had a family to look after and wanted to get my money back from the shares.” Barnard did sell his shares but carried on as technical director before leaving as he said: “The result was that Ron kept 40 per cent, Mansour Ojjeh took 60 percent and Creighton sold his holding. I agreed that I would stay another two years but at the end of 1985 I told Ron I wanted a pay rise and he never came back to me.” After that Barnard admitted he could not resist a very big financial offer from Ferrari: “Marco Piccinini got in touch with me and once they rated waving numbers at me, it was difficult to resist.” John Barnard has some regrets about leaving McLaren 38 years ago News BusinessF1 14Your monthly sample subscription has run out! TO KEEP READING, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE ON OUR WEBSITE TO BECOME A MEMBER •12 MONTHLY ISSUES •DIGITAL ACCESS •A FREE BOOK SUBSCRIBE NOW AND RECEIVE TOM RUBYTHONNext >