Porsche’s ready-made route into F1: will it join the grid at last?

The valuation of a Formula 1 team may seem an esoteric consideration for F1 followers. But it can have a huge impact upon events and the landscape upon which the sport plays out. For example, without the effect of Netflix upon the valuations of teams under Liberty’s franchise system, we’d probably now be very familiar with a Porsche Red Bull team. In which case we may have seen the departure by now of Christian Horner from there, but probably for different reasons to those which transpired.

Quite how an empowered incumbent CEO of the race team could have run on an equal basis with an entity as powerful and focused as Porsche was always difficult to envisage. But what finally nixed Porsche’s bid back in 2022 was the sudden inflation of the value of all teams as Drive to Survive became a phenomenon. The deal essentially fell down because the valuation of the team – at sub-$1bn (£830m) – was obsolete by the time the bid was formalised. F1 had massively expanded in the time it had taken to put it together. According to media site SportsPro, the value of Red Bull Racing was £2.9bn in 2023, with Ferrari leading the valuation table at £3.9bn. These figures are based upon the income streams, profit, performance, strength of brand and future prospects. With the Porsche proposal apparently undervaluing Red Bull by around £1.7bn it was relatively easy for Christian Horner to make a sound economic case against it and eventually Red Bull founder and co-owner, the late Dietrich Mateschitz, agreed with him.

“Porsche would probably not countenance running the Mercedes PU”

The SportsPro valuation for the Alpine F1 team is £1.1bn – and within a backdrop of parent company Renault seeing its share price crash by 18% in July, that may be significant. This drop came after the automotive company’s latest quarterly financial reports and the downgraded forecasts. It has left the company with around £750m less free cashflow than expected. Suddenly a non-performing F1 team with an asset value of £1.1bn looks a little vulnerable to being sold, especially as it had been the project of Renault’s CEO Luca de Meo who departed the organisation suddenly in July.

The revitalisation of the Alpine brand was very much de Meo’s pet project and the rebranding of the F1 team from Renault to Alpine was part of that. There were big plans, especially in the US, and the sudden popularity of F1 there fitted perfectly. But Alpine has not really taken off commercially and it’s since announced that all its future road cars will be 100% electric – which is not really a comfortable fit with F1. No permanent replacement has been announced for de Meo but whoever that turns out to be will surely be looking very closely at what to do with the F1 team and its tempting valuation.

The net cost of running an F1 team in the Netflix/cost cap era is negligible and can even be profitable. So there isn’t necessarily an urgent imperative for Renault to be rid of it, especially now that the big cost centre of the F1 engine programme has been curtailed. But there’s potentially over $1bn in assets sitting there at a moment in time when the parent company could use it.

An American investment group already owns 24% of Alpine F1, but could it raise the £750m-plus that would be required to buy the rest of it? On the assumption that the new management of Renault will want to sell. If the answers to each of those questions was ‘yes’, then the group would surely be looking for someone above the team principal role, someone high-powered and familiar with the CEO role in an F1 team. Someone with a vision of how to turn around an underperforming little team and take it into the big league, someone who’s done that before. But who would surely insist on full control, without interference. We don’t yet know the terms of Horner’s departure from Red Bull and whether his agreement includes a non-compete clause for a set time period. But his name suggests itself in such a scenario.

Alternatively is there another automotive manufacturer out there which might be interested in acquiring a turn-key F1 team as a platform to build upon? Well, what about Porsche? It wasn’t prepared to spend upwards of £2.5bn three years ago but had committed to £750m – which is more in line with the valuation of the Enstone team.

Porsche would probably not countenance running the Mercedes power units the team is currently contracted to and would ultimately want to make its own. But Renault just happens to also have a 2026 power unit in a late stage of development, created at Viry before Flavio Briatore insisted he’d prefer the team be a Mercedes customer. A Porsche-Viry collaboration for a Porsche-badged and developed version of the Renault original?

Ever since De Meo installed Briatore at the team last year, there have been rumours it was being prepared for a sale, something which Renault has always strenuously denied. But things are potentially more in a state of flux now. Within Renault and external to it.

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