Alpine's Flavio Briatore says moving to Mercedes customer units was his only condition for joining the Renault-owned Formula 1 team, contradicting earlier comments that he had nothing to do with the swap.
Alpine abandoned its in-house F1's power unit programme in Viry-Chatillon to become a Mercedes customer, saving the parent company a significant amount of money while also giving it better chances of a competitive power unit for the 2026 rules era after years of lagging behind F1's leading constructors. As part of the deal Alpine is also taking Mercedes gearboxes rather than producing its own.
