F1, speculation of a comeback for Mattia Binotto pops up

Mattia Binotto may return to the Circus: speculation comes from Britain

A few months after his divorce from Ferrari in the aftermath of the 2022 F1 season, Mattia Binotto’s name is back in the paddock, this time linked to another reality of top open-wheel motorsport, Alpine.

According to reports from one of the pit lane ‘insiders,’ British journalist Joe Saward, Binotto would be one of the first choices, if not the first overall, of Philippe Krief, the new CEO of the Renault-linked sports brand.

Krief, just like Binotto, has a past in Ferrari although the latter has been there for longer and Luca De Meo himself, Renault’s president and CEO for the past three years, has worked for some time in the Fiat group.

The Alpine brand landed in F1 in 2021 with the goal of getting to the top in a few years: after a promising first season, culminating with Esteban Ocon’s victory in Hungary, the French brand (which, in the meantime, had relaunched Fernando Alonso’s career) failed to achieve any other notable results, closing 2022 without even a podium finish and starting 2023 without any major rumblings, except for Ocon’s third place in Monte Carlo.