Briatore reveals staggering payday of Alpine double podium

Flavio Briatore has revealed exactly how much Alpine’s shock double podium in the São Paulo Grand Prix could be worth to the F1 team at the end of the season.

Before Sunday’s remarkable performance at Interlagos, Alpine had endured a wretched campaign this season after starting the year with the worst car on the grid.

The carousel of personnel departures has also continued, and worse still, it was recently announced that Renault would no longer continue as the power unit supplier from 2026, ending the French manufacturer’s long association with F1.

Before the weekend, Alpine had scored just 16 points in 20 grands prix. There were small shoots of recovery, such as Pierre Gasly qualifying in the top 10 in the previous two races in the United States and Mexico City, and collecting a point in the latter.

Gasly added a further two points for finishing seventh in the São Paulo Paulo sprint, but no one could have predicted what unfolded in the atrocious conditions for qualifying and the grand prix, both of which took place within hours of one another, on Sunday.

Ocon navigated his way through the five red flags in qualifying to line up fourth, and although Gasly only managed 15th on the grid, he at least avoided the carnage.

By the chequered flag at the end of a chaotic race, Ocon and Gasly finished second and third behind an imperious Max Verstappen in his Red Bull, for a 33-point haul.

With Gasly’s two points for the sprint, the 35 points in total is more than the team has collected from the last 25 grands prix combined.

Crucially, it has elevated Alpine from ninth in the constructors’ championship to sixth, with five points now covering it, Haas and RB, who are seventh and eighth respectively.

The financial implications for Alpine are huge if it can hold onto sixth. Outlining the value of the position to the team, executive advisor Briatore, speaking to Sky Italia, said: “From ninth place to sixth place is not 30 million [euros].

“It’s 29.2 million! It’s the first thing I asked.”

Briatore appreciates, however, Ocon and Gasly were fortunate, notably with the timing of the red flag following Franco Colapinto’s heavy crash midway through the race.

That afforded the duo a free tyre change to get rid of their worn inters. Remarkably, the Alpine pit crew did not make a single pit stop during the race.

Briatore added: “Without taking anything away from an incredible Ocon in the wet and Gasly, who did his job well, we were also lucky.

“I think we have a car that is better in the wet. Unfortunately, I don’t think the next three races [in Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi] will be wet.”

Extolling the virtues of Ocon and Gasly in relation to the rookies on show in Oliver Bearman, Colapinto, and to a lesser extent, Liam Lawson, Briatore said: “We saw, with all these young drivers presented as new phenomena, how much experience still counts in Formula 1.

“In any case, we saw an incredible grand prix.”