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Alpine: Not just for French nationalists and my six-year-old daughter anymore.
In order to love F1, I mean really love F1 you have to have a team. It’s that simple. There’s no way to truly love the sport and make it a part of your life by simply following one driver or hope everyone has a good time. Up to this point the only fans of Alpine were from France, or my six-year-old daughter (because they have pink on their cars). Now, that’s all about to change in a major way.
On Monday morning Alpine announced that it was getting the biggest injection of star power the team has ever received. Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney and Michael B. Jordan were teaming up to buy 24 percent of the team, extending their delightful tendrils into another business venture.
It gives Alpine something the team has been woefully lacking: Appeal. That’s not an inherent knock on Alpine as an organization, it’s just a reality. If someone new is getting into F1 you have these inherent titans of motorsport: Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, Aston Martin — then in the corner is Renault, known for making sensible compact cars in Europe that daintily sip gasoline on their way to the boulangerie. Nobody outside of France has any reason to support Alpine, and it’s not like Pierre Gasly or Esteban Ocon inspire much romanticism either.
You know who does though? Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney, and Michael B. Jordan. It’s such a profound edge that I don’t know if F1 is even prepared for what they’re going to bring to the sport yet. We saw from the Reynolds/McElhenney ownership of Wrexham that both are profoundly gifted at fan outreach and marketing. Overnight they transformed a tiny Welsh football team into an international sensation, selling out friendly matches during a tour of the United States and bringing wild success to the club with sponsorship deals.
This isn’t a Wrexham story at all. Heck, Alpine are the wealthiest club in all of F1 — though you wouldn’t know that from their lack of overall success and revolving door of drivers over the years. However, when three major Hollywood stars join together to purchase part of the team it causes buzz, a lot of it. This could manifest itself by better drivers wanting to join Alpine because of the marketing opportunities off the grid, we could see talented minds join the garage because it’s cool to be in the stars’ orbit, and perhaps most importantly it means we get to see Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney and Michael B. Jordan on Drive To Survive.
That final point it profoundly important to consider here, because the Netflix series is the DeFacto onboarding process for every American F1 fan. The show is the single biggest reason for the sport’s explosion in the United States, and everyone is looking to find their own team — often defaulting to whoever they like the most in DTS. Couple that with the fact that everyone loves Ryan Reynolds and this is a nature fit, especially when there’s no inherent U.S team to really pull for. I mean, sure, you could choose to support Haas, but you could also choose to smash your thumb in a nutcracker every week, and you might get more enjoyment out of it. You could pick Williams because of Logan Sargeant, but that means supporting Logan Sargeant which … eww.
There’s a very real chance that we could see Alpine become everyone’s new team. That instead of banking on French nationalism as a selling point, now they have Deadpool, Mac and Killmonger to make it cool to like Alpine, and dammit it’s going to work. There’s just a reality here that everything Ryan Reynolds touches turns to gold, whether it’s Mint Mobile, Aviation Gin, Wrexham, or now Alpine — the man has an ability to generate interest and hype on an unparalleled level and convert people into fans because of it.
Brace yourselves, because Alpine is about to be the hottest team in F1. Now they just have to perform so they can back it up.
