The Many Names of Alpine's Formula 1 Team Over its 41 Years of Racing

While the Alpine squad may compete under a French flag in 2022, its origins came in a warehouse in England. British company Toleman announced its intention to enter F1 in 1980, and fielded its first championship contender at the 1981 San Marino Grand Prix. But, it wasn’t until the Italian Grand Prix, much later in the season, that the team would actually qualify for its first event.

Results were mixed for Toleman and it never managed to clinch a win in its five-season run. But possibly its greatest contribution to the sport came in 1984 when it offered young Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna his debut in F1.

Between the 1985 and 1986 seasons, the Toleman team was bought out by Italian knitwear brand Benetton and a new name was born. Enter, Benetton BMW.

In its first season, the squad was plagued with reliability issues and finished ten out of a possible 16 grands prix. However, star driver Gerhard Berger did pull one out the bag that year to score the team’s first win at the 1986 Mexican Grand prix.

A new engine supplier means a new name, and between 1987 and 1994 the squad became known as Benetton Ford.

Under this guise, the team gave another would-be world champion their start in F1 when it offered Michael Schumacher a drive for the five remaining races in the 1991 season. He would go on to win a total of ten races for the Benetton Ford team and took his first World Championship win in 1994 – a first driver’s title for the team as well.

A new year, a new engine supplier and a new name. Welcome Benetton Renault to the family. The team switched to run with Renault V10 engines from 1995, but kept its driver pairing of Schumacher and Johnnie Herbert.

The squad picked up a second world title for Schumacher in 1995 and the team’s first constructor’s title was also won that year. It was also during this period that the team changed from racing under a British license to running with an Italian one.

At the end of the 1997 season, Renault pulled out of Formula 1, but left Benetton with a supply of engines to keep it on the grid. These were rebranded as Playlife motors, which was a sportswear brand owned by the Benetton family.

During this period, the team’s winning streak dried up and drivers Giancarlo Fisichella and Alexander Wurz didn’t make it onto the top step of the podium over the three-year period. Fisichella did, however, pick up four second-place finishes.

But Renault’s departure from the sport was short-lived, and it announced plans to purchase the Benetton team in 2000. The squad kept its name, but added Renault to the end once again, to reflect its new supply of engines from the French firm.

In 2001, the squad partnered Giancarlo Fisichella with future world champion Jenson Button, who had just been dropped by Williams.

From 2002, Benetton was gone and the full Renault works team was born. So too was the squad’s base at Enstone in the UK, where it is still based to this day.

Arguably the team’s most successful period, this era saw it support Fernando Alonso to his first world title in 2005. But all that success also brought drama, and the squad was involved in allegations of race fixing when Nelson Piquet Jr. was found to have deliberately crashed during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

Then, just to confuse us all, the Renault team changed its name to that of another squad on the grid, becoming Lotus Renault. The team that was Lotus Renault then became Caterham and spawned some of the best F1 merch you can find. But I digress.

This was a pretty mixed period for the team. Sure, Kimi Räikkönen picked up a couple of wins and teammate Romain Grosjean earned a few podiums, but the team was caught out by Formula 1’s 2014 switch to hybrid powertrains. That year, it scored points on just three races out of 20.

But as is the way with F1, if your engine doesn’t work, you just go out and find a new one. And that’s exactly what the Enstone team did for the 2015 season, switching to powerplants made by World Champion manufacturer Mercedes.

Sure, this helped the squad back onto the podium. But it was plagued with issues and driver Pastor Maldonado managed to reach the checkered flag in just half of the races run that year.

After losing its works team at the end of 2011, Renault had formed a close partnership with Red Bull to supply engines to the squad between 2011 and 2015. But, after a dramatic fallout led by Red Bull boss Christian Horner, the two parted ways and all Renault branding was lost from Red Bull’s cars.

This wasn’t good enough for the French team, and it wanted back into the sport. So, it bought back the old team it had sold off, and the Renault Sport F1 team was born. Between 2016 and 2021, the team slowly began climbing its way up the standings and even made it back onto the podium in its final year under this guise.

Things had to change once again and the Enstone squad went through yet another rebrand ahead of the 2021 season. The Renault Sport Formula 1 team changed its name to Alpine Renault for 2021 in order to align itself with the Renault-owned sports car brand.

The change in name brought with it a shift to a sleek blue and red livery, and saw the team welcome double World Champion Fernando Alonso, and French driver Esteban Ocon.

After becoming Alpine, the squad earned its first win since 2013 when Ocon triumphed at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix.