Alpine F1 team set for name change amid Christian Horner part-ownership bid

An unexpected new brand looks set to join the Formula 1 grid.

Alpine look set for an identity change in the 2027 F1 season (Image: Getty)

The Alpine Formula 1 team looks set for a change of identity for next season with a change in title sponsor on the cards. The outfit currently competes officially as the BWT Alpine Formula 1 Team, with Austrian water treatment company BWT having been a major sponsor for several years.

So embedded is the company in Alpine that car liveries over the last few years have featured varying amounts of bright pink, which is BWT’s signature colour. But it may disappear after the current season with that partnership looking likely to come to an end and a new name sponsorship deal set to be struck.

According to GPBlog, luxury goods brand Gucci is the intended new title sponsor of the Alpine team from next year. There is an obvious link between the two as Luca de Meo, the former chief executive of Renault, who are the majority shareholders in the team, is head of the Kering group which is the parent company of the Gucci brand.

But an Alpine spokesperson would not confirm the impending new deal and said: “We are constantly looking for new partnership opportunities and in contact with a wide range of brands and companies as potential partners. The discussions are however always kept confidential and they are disclosed only when confirmed and agreed by all parties.”

Christian Horner wants to return to the Formula 1 world (Image: Getty)

Finances of the impending Gucci deal are not currently known, though name sponsorship deals in F1 these days are usually worth tens of millions of pounds to a team every year. It is believed Red Bull still rake in the most out of any outfit from their long-term deal with American tech firm Oracle, which is said to be worth around £80million per year.

Other huge deals include Ferrari’s naming rights deal with IT company HP, Mercedes’ long-time partnership with Malaysian petrochemicals firm Petronas and McLaren’s relatively new agreement with global payment services provider Mastercard. All of the above are believed to be worth upwards of £50million per year. And even teams further down the grid are raking the cash in with along every one of F1’s 11 teams earning significant cash from a title sponsor.

F1 is an attractive market for a luxury brand like Gucci who will pay handsomely to land the Alpine title sponsorship. That will put significant funding into the team at a time when the ownership structure looks likely to change in the coming months, with Otro Capital looking to sell the 24 percent stake in the team that it bought less than three years ago for a handsome profit.

Christian Horner is known to be one of the interested parties, having assembled a consortium of financial backers to help fund his bid. But his desire to return to the F1 world alone won’t help him see off rival bidders, one of which is the Mercedes team led by Horner’s former nemesis Toto Wolff, who has admitted publicly that he is exploring the idea of expanding his outfit’s current engine supply deal with Alpine which began this year.