Davide Brivio, Suzuki

Alpine confirms ex-Moto GP team boss Brivio as new F1 racing director

2021 F1 season

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Alpine has confirmed the arrival of former Suzuki Moto GP team boss Davide Brivio as its racing director for the 2021 F1 season.

Brivio arrives following a shake-up in the management of the team, which competed as Renault until last season. He will report to Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi, who was announced as the replacement for the team’s managing director Cyril Abiteboul. Alpine said the exact nature of Brivio’s role “will be announced in the coming weeks”.

The arrival of Brivio has been expected since Suzuki announced his departure earlier this month. Brivio’s eight-year spell at Suzuki culminated in a highly successful 2020 season, including championship victories for the team and rider Joan Mir. Brivio said at the time “a new professional challenge and opportunity suddenly came to me and in the end I decided to take it.”

He joins a team which has made consistent progress since Renault returned to Formula 1 as a full constructor in 2016. Last year it scored the highest points total since its return, and drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon delivered three podiums finishes for the team.

Fernando Alonso, who won two world championships for the Enstone-based team in 2005 and 2006, arrives in place of Ricciardo for the new season.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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19 comments on “Alpine confirms ex-Moto GP team boss Brivio as new F1 racing director”

  1. Motogp has no need for aero, renault lacks aero skills, and they put a motogp boss at the head. Alonso is already losing.

    1. Good thing he’s not an aerodynamicist then!

    2. Are motorbike exempt from the laws of aerodynamics then?
      Motogp has lots of wings and fins and things poking out underneath all in the name of aero. Anyway, a Racing Director is there to employ the best aero man they can get.

    3. Just look at those front wings on those biks :D You missed that part, didn’t you?

  2. Exact position to still be announced?

    For me that says Cyril’s departure was unexpected and they haven’t exactly figured out how to structure the team yet

    1. @the-edge Yeah interesting that

    2. Another site is reporting that he has been confirmed as racing director.

  3. Brivio has done very well at Suzuki but the world of F1 is very different.

    For a start, Suzuki were a new entrant to MotoGP and under its rules received performance concessions which helped them to catch-up with the front runners. As we know F1 is far less ‘helpful’.

    Good luck to him and Alpine though. With the arrival of Alonso too they could be an exciting team to watch, on and off the track!

    1. @sonnycrockett to a point, since Suzuki has alternated between having and losing those concessions – they had them when they returned, raced without those concessions in 2017, were given concessions for 2018 and then have raced without those concessions since then, so those concessions would have only taken them so far.

      1. They alternated between having concessions and not? I love watching MotoGP but I know little about it, is it possible they’ve come up with a more convoluted system than F1?

        1. MotoGP seems far better at creating a level playing field for teams.

          It’s also much better at bringing in new riders based on merit rather than on sponsorship revenue.

          1. Dude the Romans created more level playing fields than F1

          2. @sonnycrockett I disagree, MotoGP’s playing field is far less level. What they do is create a far more equal outcome. You have bikes that are several years old, customer teams that have the same bikes or old bikes from the manufacturers, and of course the concessions that you get for being worse, including extra development, extra engines etc.

        2. @bernasaurus in some ways, yes – if a team happens to finish in the top 3 and scores enough “concession points”, then they have the additional concessions that are allocated to them (increased testing (with the teams allowed to use their normal riders), increased engine development time, an increased engine allocation and so forth) withdrawn, although some of that is dependent on whether the weather conditions were wet or dry at the time.

    2. @sonnycrockett Brivio’s resume is much broader than Suzuki. Small miracle to see suzuki competitive but Brivio is best known for Rossi’s success.

      1. True. It’ll be interesting to see how he gets on.

  4. The future of Renault Alpine looks great lmao

  5. I’d like to see how the overall structure at Renault shakes out.

    So does this mean that Brivio is in charge of race weekends in a team principal type role? Or is that Marcin Budkowski? Where does Alan Permane fit into all this?

    Also, does this mean that Laurent Rossi as CEO of the entire Alpine division become responsible for the overall commercial side of the team?

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