‘Not this one’ – Flavio Briatore ‘not the bad guy all the time’ in latest Renault saga

Former Renault team boss turned special advisor Flavio Briatore is adamant he’s not always the “bad guy” in the Renault story, of which the latest saga relates to the scrapping of their Viry PU project.

Briatore was, and will probably forever be remembered as, the guy who made the call at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix for Nelson Piquet Jr to crash to help his team-mate Fernando Alonso win the race.

Flavio Briatore: Everything else you [can] blame me. Not this one

The play-by-play of that came to light in 2009 when Piquet Jr. was axed and spilled the beans with the consequences lingering until today with Felipe Massa fighting the outcome of that year’s championship title.

But despite the legal action, Renault brought Briatore – who was banned from the sport for several years for his part in Crashgate – back into the fold this season as they sought to recover from their early-season losses.

However, he’s been vilified from the latest Renault drama.

While it was revealed in June that Renault, the engine supplier for the ‘works team’ Alpine, could withdraw from Formula 1 in 2026, that was all but confirmed later when former Alpine team boss Bruno Famin said a month later: “I think the big announcement was on Tuesday, last Tuesday, where we had to announce the staff in Viry that there was a project to switch to a different power unit from 2026. And that was really a shock.”

And it was a shock to the engine team at Viry that Briatore had nothing to do with.

“The problem is the evidence,” he said as per Motorsport.com. “Regarding the engine, it was decided already from the management, and for me it is fine.

“Whatever our chairman decides, fine. This was decided already, soon before I arrived in the team.

“I am not the bad guy all the time… everything else you [can] blame me. Not this one.”

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He was quick to refute suggestions this was a sign Alpine was to be sold amidst speculation they were to become a Mercedes customer outfit.

“No, there is nothing for sale,” he said. “Everything, we buy. If we had the opportunity, we [would] buy another one [team] and I put a managing director in.

“Something is very clear. Luca de Meo never wants to sell the team. Question finito.”

Pressed to whether Renault’s engine decision, could lead to job losses, Briatore said: “I don’t know.

“At Enstone I don’t know if we have too many people or not. Let me check.

“We don’t want to cut any jobs. We want to just have an efficiency. The people who want to stay with us, they are welcome to stay. But we need everybody in the same line.

“We want to have people with the experience, the people working together as an F1 team. After that, we don’t want to fire anybody.”

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