New Alpine Formula 1 racing director Davide Brivio expects an “accelerated learning” process as he adapts from MotoGP but also sees “a lot of similarities” between the two championships.
Brivio was a shock hire for the Renault team’s rebrand as Alpine in 2021, having spent his career so far working in motorcycle racing.
He was a MotoGP title-winning team boss with Yamaha and Suzuki, clinching the championship for the latter last year.
Addressing his transition from bike racing to F1, Brivio said there were fundamental similarities between the two disciplines and his challenge would be getting up to speed with F1’s specific characteristics.
“Sportspeople are a unique breed: determined, focused, driven, hungry, almost ruthless,” said Brivio.
“But bikes and F1 are both team sports, so we need the athletes to look beyond their personal ambition and deliver for the whole, not just for their own individual aims.
“Last year in MotoGP we did just that, we worked as a team, and won the championship. It was entirely a team effort and conducted in very challenging competitive conditions.
“So, Formula 1 in this respect is similar, you need to work together, get the most from each part of the whole to succeed.
“However, you can’t get away from the fact that the sports have very different technologies. The methodologies and the way they work are different, and I look forward to discovering all the Formula 1 specificities.
“It will be an accelerated learning, but the team in Enstone and Viry are really experienced and motivated so there is an advantage for me there.
“We know what we have to do as a team. And now we’ll be getting the best out of each other.
“Our goal is totally clear – which makes the roadmap to achieve them also very clear.”
Brivio was lauded as an exceptional leader in MotoGP and his management of the multi-national Suzuki operation was a key example of that.
Installing him as team boss at Alpine would have given him the mandate to mould the team in his own image. Now he does not have that, which makes the task ahead of him in F1 very different to what he left behind in MotoGP.
Sharing responsibilities with executive director Marcin Budkowski does risk making life more difficult to Brivio if different areas of the team do not recognise his authority.
But in his first address in his Alpine role, Brivio made it clear he will play to his strengths in F1. In some way, being racing director will help with that.
Brivio has been tasked with overseeing Alpine’s trackside operations, with executive director Budkowski taking charge of the overall project back at its Enstone headquarters.
Budkowski will be responsible for making sure Enstone has what it needs to build the best car it can, chassis technical director Pat Fry will be responsible for guiding the design team in that quest, while Remi Taffin will be responsible with leading engine development at Renault’s Viry factory.
Brivio views his job as making sure the race team inherits the work of the thousands of people across Enstone and Viry, and executes on-track.
That means taming a driver and person of Fernando Alonso’s notoriety, but Brivio already seems well up for that challenge – important given the two-time world champion has a reputation for causing internal rifts, and Brivio seems like a man who values a team greater than the sum of its individual parts.
In this sense, Brivio will still be managing a team of people, rather than worrying about microscopic details of F1 technology. He will also form part of a structure that aims to tap into specific skillsets, and it’s worth recognising that at Suzuki he was very keen to stress that teamwork was always more valuable than a single project leader.
These are the greatest parallels between F1 and MotoGP, even if it’s happening on a grander scale in his new environment.
“It’s probably harder for MotoGP to go to Formula 1, I think, because Formula 1 is a bigger organisation, it’s more complex, and many more people,” Brivio said of the scope of his challenge.
“It’s a little bit more complex. So, that is good news for me!
“Let’s see. I feel a lot of similarities, because there is teamwork, drivers that are similar in attitude to the riders.
“It’s much more complex in terms of technicality, many more parameters, more problems, aerodynamics which you don’t have.
“But this is a technical job. In terms of putting the team together, trying to strengthen the group, I think there are similarities.”
As noted by The Race’s MotoGP reporter Simon Patterson in his initial analysis of Brivio’s shock switch, Brivio has been managing winning bike-racing teams since the 1990s.
Brivio started in the World Superbike paddock at the height of its dominance over grand prix racing and carved out a reputation in the motorcycle world as someone capable of turning mid-pack teams into championship challengers.
Alpine will hope that trait can translate to F1, given the team has held lofty ambitions since Renault re-entered a works team in 2016.
There are further hurdles to consider ahead of his new challenge, not least the risk of getting sucked into (and destabilised by) the Machiavellian world of F1 politics.
But Brivio has made it clear the allure was so powerful, he had to give F1 a try.
“Of course it was not easy to leave my old team, an environment which I knew very well, but Formula 1 has been for me a dream for a long time,” said Brivio.
“It’s very exciting for me to start something completely new, to get into a new environment.
“Of course, I have a lot to learn, I have a lot to understand, but it’s adrenaline for me, it’s the oxygen, to get to work and to learn a lot of things.
“It was an opportunity which I felt I had to take. Probably I would have regretted it if I didn’t take it.
“Now, here I am. And I will try to do my best. I hope I can contribute to the Formula 1 team with my experience.
“It won’t be easy, I need some time, but I’m fully committed to try to get involved as best as possible.”
