No five-year plans, no guarantees: Alpine is embarking on a sober but consistent rebuild under team boss Steve Nielsen
Alpine team boss Steve Nielsen is deliberately breaking with the Formula 1 team’s previous philosophy. Renault and Alpine had repeatedly communicated long-term plans in the past, but never achieved the goals they had set for themselves. That is now set to change.
“Personally, I don’t believe in a 100-race plan or a three- or five-year plan or anything like that,” Nielsen said. “I think it’s about having the best people possible and putting them in the right positions. Then you give them a clear goal and let the whole team work toward that goal—as hard and as well as possible.”
Under his leadership, Alpine will work its way forward “step by step,” said Nielsen, who has been in charge of the French-British racing team since fall 2025. However, he is not expecting immediate success, but rather a “slow, tough process.”
Why Nielsen is not promising quick wins
This is because Alpine’s initial focus is on improving internal structures and recruiting new talent. That takes time. “Things like that can’t be turned around in a few months or even a year,” Nielsen explained.
He speaks from experience: Nielsen was sporting director at Alpine’s predecessor Renault when the team won the Formula 1 world championship titles in 2005 and 2006 – after many years of development work. Now this process is starting all over again after Alpine finished the 2025 season at the bottom of the constructors’ standings.
Nielsen did not want to specify how quickly Alpine will make progress. All he said was: “I can say that we will build a better car next year than this year. But I can’t say whether that will be enough for first, tenth or twentieth place on the starting grid.”
His goal is “ideally to fight for points every race weekend,” Nielsen said. Alpine only managed to do that sporadically in the 2025 Formula 1 season. “We were too far behind too often,” said Nielsen. “That’s not where this team belongs and where it traditionally stands. We need to be in the upper midfield.”
