Alpine’s F1 struggles are “anti-marketing, damaging the brand,” says Rosberg

Nico Rosberg has spoken about the recent off-track changes happening at the Alpine Formula 1 team and its on-track performance struggles.

The French team is currently last in the constructors’ standings with 11 points after multiple changes in leadership in recent years. The most recent announcement came last weekend when Renault confirmed that CEO Luca de Meo had decided to step down from his role, with his stewardship coming to an end on 15 July.

The 2016 F1 champion analysed the changes at the team during the Sky Sports F1 Show podcast, comparing it to some of the struggles from his time at Mercedes, claiming that the poor results are “anti-marketing.”

“We know how important stability is for the performance of a team,” Rosberg explained. “It’s one of the weaknesses of Ferrari also who’ve had a lack of stability as well. Changing a lot of leadership positions all the time in the last years compared with someone like Mercedes, where if I walk into Mercedes today, the leaders from my time 15 years ago are still there in most of the key roles.

“It’s really awesome to see that continuity, and at the same time, there’s young talent coming through as well to complement.

“So Alpine… When I was at Mercedes and we were driving around last place, they were almost going to pull the plug every weekend because they’re paying a lot of money and it’s anti-marketing, it’s marketing that is damaging the brand of Alpine and Renault if you’re just driving around in last place.”

Rosberg also noted the trends in the wider automotive industry and how this is likely impacting the team.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine F1 A525 Renault leads Franco Colapinto, Alpine F1 A525

Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images

“And also in the face of the challenging environment for the automotive industry, where sales are plummeting,” he continued. “The shift to e-mobility is a struggle, the Chinese are coming and conquering more and more market share. Tesla is taking market share.

“The first thing that you cut is marketing budget, and marketing the F1 team falls under marketing budget. So we need to keep an eye on that now with new leadership, whether he’s pro-F1 or against F1 but a difficult situation.”