Photo credit: BWT Alpine F1 Team
Earlier this week was announced that Alpine will sell 24% of their market shares to several investors and will earn overall €200 million, thus increasing the value of the team to €900 million.
Otro Capital, RedBird Capital Partners and Maximum Effort Investments were announced as Alpine partners, with members of each company ready to cover some important spots in the team management.
During today’s press conference, ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix, Alpine driver Pierre Gasly was asked what it means – in layman’s words – an investment of an impressive amount of money like the one just made for Alpine.
“What does that mean? Well, that means that we obviously got more investment,” he said.
“But what it means, I think, is just the vision of the team. Of Alpine, of the Renault Group, of the Formula 1 team, to expand, to improve for the future in Formula 1, and try to use the expertise of these people that are coming on board,” the Frenchman added.
“Three big firms: Otro, RedBird and Maximum Efforts joining on board. And they’ve got really good expertise and also other sports: NFL NHL, in football, in many other disciplines that will be trying to use as much as we can to improve our strength.”
One of the investors is one of Hollywood’s most famous actors – already an owner of Wrexham FC, a Welsh football club – Ryan Reynolds.
“I must say, I’m personally a fan of him and his work,” Gasly said.
“I think is definitely one of my favourite actors, and yeah, I’m definitely super-excited to meet him at some point during the season.”
Esteban Ocon had his say on the matter as well. The French driver will be getting the opportunity to meet Reynolds in London.
“I think it’s fantastic [Reynolds’ investment]. He told me I was invited on the set in London for the ‘Deadpool’ movie, so I’m definitely going to be going.
“He also said that he was very much looking forward to learn from our world, see how things work, and yeah, just to have a racing chat altogether.”
Although they won’t help make the car any quicker, the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix winner is confident they will help off track quite a bit.
“All the investors, in general, they’re going to bring their expertise into the team, and it really shows the dedication of the team to push forward on every aspect,” Ocon stated.
“Obviously, that’s not going to help on the performance of the car itself, but on every other aspect that we can improve, we’re going to have these investors’ expertise, where they excel.”
