“What Are They Trying to Achieve?”: Karun Chandhok Bashes Alpine Amid Chaos; Suggests Selling Out

Due to a disappointing start to the 2025 season, Alpine are currently undergoing another period of turmoil. Team principal Oliver Oakes resigned after just the first six races, and now it is executive advisor Flavio Briatore who will take charge until the side is able to find an adequate replacement.

There has been a lack of stability at Enstone as Oakes is the fourth team boss to have departed Alpine since 2021. Moreover, the team has also had several other high-profile names exit the team, including some brilliant drivers such as two-time champion Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri, who is currently leading the Drivers’ standings this season.

And these personnel exits aren’t the only concern for Alpine. With the team’s in-house Renault engines not having delivered the desired performance results, the Enstone-based outfit are switching to Mercedes power units from next season.

Amid this upheaval at Alpine on all fronts, former F1 driver-turned-pundit Karun Chandhok wonders what is their purpose to even exist in F1. It was his fellow Sky Sports F1 expert David Croft who first raised this question back in 2019.

Speaking of the same, Chandhok said on the latest episode of Sky Sports’ The F1 Show podcast, “I actually rewind back to our friend David Croft in Melbourne 2019, I believe, where we sat down and he went, ‘What is the point of Renault in F1?’ And that’s what it comes back to, what are they trying to achieve?”

Since Alpine are no longer a works outfit, Chandhok believes it is pertinent to raise this question. He believes they are probably attempting to build a brand for Alpine, which itself does not have a very high volume of car sales.

So, Chandhok believes Renault’s top management’s best decision would be to sell the Alpine F1 team. “If they’re playing the valuation game, then why not sell it?” he added. Chandhok believes that Alpine are likely to get a good return on their investment as team valuations are at an all-time high in recent years due to the sport’s rapid growth.

The Indian former F1 driver believes Hitech could be one of the possible suitors, as they were desperate to join F1. During the same podcast, Chandhok then also speculated about the reasons why Oakes perhaps resigned from his role as team principal.

Chandhok fears something is really wrong at Alpine

Soon after Oakes announced his resignation, many speculated that there was a power struggle at play with Briatore. Some believe that Oakes was happy with Jack Doohan and wanted him to continue at the team, but Briatore eventually got his way by replacing the Australian with Franco Colapinto.

However, per Chandhok, Oakes would not have just resigned because he was not happy with the driver-swapping decision. “I smell a rat, Simon,” Chandhok replied when asked if he too believes that Oakes resigned because he was not happy that Colapinto replaced Doohan. “I think, there’s something more rotten in the state of Alpine, isn’t it”?

“He [Oakes] hasn’t quit based on just a driver decision,” the 41-year-old expert added. “He has not quit the chance to be one of the 10, going to be 11 team principals of the top of the sport based on who’s going to be in the second seat”.

So, while it is always difficult to really know what is going on at Alpine, it does seem that the team is going through some real turmoil. Former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer also slammed Renault’s senior management on several occasions about how he was not happy with the way he was told to run the team.

Szafnauer revealed in an interview earlier this year that one of the major reasons he left Alpine was that he was not keen on firing the employees—something he was told to do—when the team was not getting good results. He believes that simply replacing people—who he believes were doing a good job—would not turn their fortunes around, as it would take any team time to do so.