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‘Fashion finishes first’: $150m Gucci deal transforms F1 laughing stock
Updated . First published at
The first luxury fashion house has joined the Formula 1 grid.
In the announcement of Italian powerhouse Gucci joining Alpine F1 as its title sponsor from 2027, a wave of intrigue has taken over the sport.
Flavio Briatore has returned to the F1 grid and immediately made waves down the paddock. Marcel van Dorst
And who else but Formula 1’s villain, Flavio Briatore, to be the one to get the record-breaking sponsorship over the line?
Welcome, Gucci Racing Alpine Formula 1 team.
To understand how monumental this deal is, you have to look back at where Alpine was just a year ago.
Their 2025 season was nothing to write home about, except for their serious misgivings - dropping Jack Doohan and finishing dead last in the constructors standings.
Yet, just a year later, they have secured one of the largest and most prestigious commercial deals in motorsport history.
Fashion and culture has always intertwined in the Formula 1 paddock. Louis Vuitton sponsored the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, luxury giant LVMH is tied to F1 itself and multiple drivers strut through the paddock in fashion-forward outfits.
But no fashion house has ever partnered alongside, or had their title plastered, on a Formula 1 team. So why would Italian giant Gucci pick the struggling Alpine?
This deal is a record in the sport. Alpine will move on from BWT’s iconic (but lame) pink and blue colours, put a strike through that era and instead allow Gucci to reliably receive the global reach F1 now delivers, particularly in the United States.
Love him or hate him, Briatore has become a shining light in Alpine’s darkest days.
This partnership feels like a mirror image of the early 1990s, when the flamboyant executive director transformed Benetton from a clothing brand’s marketing experiment into a championship-winning team.
As Briatore recently said, he and his Enstone team have “shown that fashion can finish first in F1”.
The scale of the Gucci deal is huge – and not just in monetary terms, with it estimated to be worth upwards of $150 million over the next few years.
Although speculative, we can argue the deal is one of the largest in the sport currently. The organisation aims to have a new logo “Gucci Racing” on the car, with the signature black and gold emblazoned on the grid.
Gucci joins the Formula 1 grid with Alpine. Formula 1
Even the Alpine mechanics will be the best dressed in the paddock.
Despite the glitz and glamour, Briatore remains hyper-focused on performance. When asked what was now missing for Alpine to be winning races, Briatore quipped: “Half a second.”
“We need to be pushing hard in the factory,” he said.
“We need better quality people. We have not achieved what I want. I’m missing a few quality people with experience, because the team is still very young.
“Our job is to make the car competitive. It’s as simple as that,” he further remarked.
“If you don’t have the car competitive then whatever press conference you are doing, it will only be an excuse. We don’t want excuses.
“We want to be competitive.”
The reason for this deal is not only because of F1’s overall global reach, but also Briatore’s understanding that the sport’s fanbase is shifting.
Gucci’s internal analysis suggested that the average age of F1 fans is now 32 – and critically, half of the new fans that are being attracted to grands prix are female.
As the Alpine executive advisor said: “Five years ago, the average age (of a fan) was 50 to 55.”
By tapping into a new market with ample Formula 1 exposure left to give, Briatore has just handed Alpine the keys to a new business model that could boost the team to championship contention.
Although he’s still a villain accused of one of the sport’s largest cheating scandals, Briatore is a man who knows exactly what a team needs to achieve to win a championship - and he aims to do that in style with Alpine.
