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Alpine and Sauber (Audi in the future) are two teams backed/will be backed shortly by automotive giants. What that would ideally mean is that the long-term prospect of such teams is supposed to be positive.
Yet, if we look at these two teams right now, they are the least sought-after teams in the F1 driver market. Carlos Sainz has opted to go to Williams instead of going to Audi or Alpine. Esteban Ocon, according to reports, thinks Haas is a better team as compared to Audi after leaving Alpine.
One could excuse the Audi situation because it is still technically not joining F1. The German brand will enter the grid in 2026. Having said that, the preparations have already begun. There's large-scale investment in Hinwil, the current Sauber base, where the Swiss squad led by Andreas Seidl is trying to create a super team that could one day fight for wins.
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At the same time, reports have emerged that Alpine is looking to get rid of the 'engine manufacturer' arrangement and become a customer team for 2026. The Renault operation has run for close to a decade now, and except for one win in 2021 for Esteban Ocon, this team has been a monumental disaster.
Audi officially enters the sport in 2026 but at Sauber, Andreas Seidl has already begun working on the team's debut. There are, however, certain things that the German brand could learn from Alpine's monumental failure in F1. Let's take a look.
Audi's key learnings from Alpine
#1 Under-investment equals underperformance
Ever since Renault/Alpine stepped up as a constructor in 2016, one of the brand's mottos was to succeed 'efficiently'. It did not want to get into an arms race of spending with teams like Mercedes, Ferrari, and Red Bull. It wanted to develop, but the growth would come with efficient spending.
The result? The team never had the best or even the second-best power unit on the grid. It never had a great chassis either. In terms of facilities, while Aston Martin, McLaren, Ferrari, and others have revamped and kept things upgraded, Alpine's infrastructure was just not on the same level.
There's an oft-repeated saying in F1, "You never win in Formula 1 by underspending." Audi has to make sure it has deep pockets, even if the sport has a cost cap in place now.
#2 Success takes years
Something that characterized Alpine's stint in F1 was the haphazardness with which the entire operation worked. When it first began, there was talk of a four-year period before the team could be expected to start winning. That period never came, but the management changed.
Then there was a 5-year plan which was cut short inexplicably into the second season because the brand panicked for some reason. In terms of blunders, not many come close to the fact that two brilliant F1 minds in Fred Vasseur and Otmar Szafnauer were part of the squad but eventually left.
If Audi is serious about success in F1, the first thing it needs to do is back Andreas Seidl to the hilt and let him do the job. Seidl led McLaren's revival. He is the right man for the job, but success is not going to happen overnight. It's going to take years.
A realistic expectation is that Audi doesn't win a race for the first three seasons in F1, and the team has to understand that idea very quickly.
#3 F1 teams are not run from the boardroom
Finally, possibly the most important thing for Audi is that the F1 team cannot be run from the boardroom. Ferrari, for the most part, has also suffered from this, but Alpine might just be the biggest proponent of it.
The team was run from the boardroom from day 1 and as a result, there was just too much politics from top to bottom. Laurent Rossi, Cyril Abiteboul, or for that matter Bruno Famin have found themselves in positions of power because of political maneuvers that could impress the boardroom but it will never yield results.
