Flavio Briatore

The thing is, we've seen Ocon in this situation at Alpine.

And did he, in fact, do anything to be dismissed in the middle of the weekend? No, actually, he saved their season in Brazil by almost beating Max Verstappen in an absolute deluge, one that Behrman happened to crash out of at a Haas, and then was given the choice by Briatore to either not race the final races so he could test with Haas the team he was going to, Or get the proper send-off from the French team that he had wanted to join and left Mercedes to join.

And he chose to honor his new team.

I just don't think, for all that people love to speculate, I just don't think he's so unprofessional as to have done anything remotely worth it.

um yeah so i i remain i think it makes the most sense that racing bulls is the best of the rest the biggest headline however would have been alpine because of how much performance they lacked last year

yeah i don't think anyone in the alpine uh organization would be wanting to relive what 2025 was like for them because there was a lot that was happening um i do have to just mention this there was a very brief moment on broadcast and i don't know whether everyone caught this because it was literally like half a second where they showed Flavio Briatore being in disbelief at how long Pierre Gasly's pit stop was and it was just incredibly amusing to me so I would highly recommend that if you weren't able to catch it on broadcast that you go and google it because it did it was particularly entertaining and obviously if you think about the fact that Pierre Gasly was the sole Alpine to actually finish the race because Franco Colapinto retired the car I think it just makes it all the more entertaining.

I want to move on to now a range of questions all belonging to the back of the grid with the likes of Haas, Williams, Aston Martin and Cadillac.

First and foremost, I want to talk about Haas because they look like they were set for a really good race.

So there's some interest there around how that relationship might be as well if he wants to buy in.

yeah absolutely uh but it's worth noting in the interim that reno's didn't ditch its own engines hasn't it i mean this year no longer powered by reno and in fact reno's just sold its engine division completely or is about to sell it completely so to some extent that that would smooth things over the teams also run by flavio briatore who is who is in a sense a long-term render person but not reno the business if you like reno the f1 team and and they seem to get along well um but there is you're right there's a there would be a great irony in the fact that a company he railed for so long against and so contentiously against to the point where he renamed his engines after a watch sponsor instead of the renault company um he'd end up being a shareholder in that team be a remarkable turn of events but

that's formula one yeah yeah and i just can't help but thinking with all this discussion that i'm sure the makers of drive to survive would just love it if christian came back into f1 Michael Lamonato, always great to talk to you, mate.

Thank you very much for giving us your time on this Tuesday morning.

The brand was not being built beyond the paddock.

And the owners of Labatt understood that and they tasked me with the mission to go make that happen, you know, with Flavio Briatore.

So I'm standing in the paddocks with Flavio Briatore after the race in Montreal, the Canadian Grand Prix.

It wasn't like really fancy like it is now.

You know, the cook is right there behind the garage cooking pasta.

That's what Michael Polley was talking to her about.

So.

Gucci Verum, I created because of Flavio Briatore.

Alonso and Todt had shook on it.

And then Alonso went back on that and signed up with Flavio Briatore.

So Todd had a problem with Alonso.

And this was at the point when Alonso

was transitioning from Adrian Campos management to Flavio Briatore, wasn't it? And actually, probably a good decision from Alonso.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, one of them was saying, okay, Raikkonen or Alonso? And Todd said, Raikkonen.

is... little Jordan Lennox style over here.

I think that Flavio Briatore will wear some, in honor of the USGP, will wear some USGP themed glasses on race day, either with blue lenses or red lenses.

He does.

It'll be strictly by coincidence.