The Alpine F1 car launch on a cruise ship aimed for an extravagant presentation but fell short in execution. Hosts Matt and Tommy critique the event's lack of energy and engagement, highlighting the contrast between the vibrant setting and the monotonous delivery by team members. They discuss the missed opportunity for a more dynamic presentation, suggesting that modern car launches should be more entertaining and less corporate. The episode also touches on the challenges of capturing audience attention in today's fast-paced media landscape.
We jump on a cruise ship to see Alpine’s car launch, featuring all the pomp and circumstance of an early 2000’s F1 party - but with none of the fun. At least the car continues to look amazing!
Sign up to our Patreon! You'll get access to every P1 episode ad-free, extended versions of every 2026 race review, early access to tickets & merch, and access to our Discord server where you can chat with us and other F1 fans! Click here to sign up now: http://patreon.com/mattp1tommy
"...they've bought Flavio back, who was their team principal in the early 2000s and gone, let's have an early 2000s car launch. Because that screams to me of back in that early 2000s era,..."
Formula One is a type of car racing where specially designed cars compete in races called Grands Prix. It's known for being very fast and using the latest technology in cars.
Formula One is the highest class of international auto racing for single-seater formula racing cars. It features a series of races known as Grands Prix, held on various circuits around the world, and is known for its advanced technology and high-speed competition.
"...Essentially Alpine need to show off their corporate colors..."
Alpine is a French car brand that makes sporty cars. They are part of the Renault company and are known for their performance and lightweight designs.
Alpine is a French automotive manufacturer known for producing sports cars and is a subsidiary of Renault, focusing on lightweight and performance-oriented vehicles.
"...with the Mercedes power unit, could this be the resurgence of Alpine?"
A power unit is the engine and all its parts that help a car move, especially in racing. It includes the engine and other technology that makes it work better.
In motorsports, a 'power unit' refers to the complete engine system, including the internal combustion engine and any hybrid components. It is crucial for the performance of the car in racing.
Select text to request an explanation
We spend a third of our lives in bed, so why settle for ordinary sheets?
Miracle-made sheets use NASA-inspired, silver-infused fabric to keep you cool, clean, and comfortable all night long.
The silver naturally fights bacteria, so your sheets stay fresher up to three times longer.
That means fewer washes, clearer skin, and better sleep.
They're soft, breathable, and built-to-last, an affordable luxury that actually delivers.
It's not magic. It's science, inspired by innovation, designed for everyday life.
Because sometimes, the simplest upgrades make the biggest difference.
This Christmas, upgrade your sleep or give the gift of better rest.
Go to trimiracle.com slash clean to try Miracle-made sheets today.
You'll save over 40%, and when you use promo code CLEAN, you'll get an extra 20% off plus a free three-piece towel set.
There are a million reasons people start therapy. A breakup, burnout, a new job, whatever your reason, there is one place to start.
Grow Therapy meets you where you are, with support that actually sticks.
Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, Grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around.
They connect you with thousands of independent, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends.
You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and get started in as little as two days.
And if something comes up, you can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost.
There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments, you just pay per session.
Grow helps you find therapy on your time.
Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help.
Sessions average about $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0, depending on their plan.
Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states.
Visit growtherapy.com slash start now today to get started.
That's growtherapy.com slash start now.
Growtherapy.com slash start now.
Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the P1 Podcast with Matt and Tommy, double episode day.
Yes, two Formula One car launches in one day always makes me question whether they talk to each other
or whether it's just unlucky that they both chose the same date.
But you would think as Formula One teams ever go, when are you launching?
The same within an hour of each other? Absolutely, that's what we were doing.
We've already booked a massive cruise ship. I'm sorry.
We can't really do anything.
We're still pasting the video then.
Just before you to ruin all of your MSC crews work that you've done.
But yes, we were on a cruise ship, Tommy. Well, we weren't, but they were.
Sadly, we didn't get an invite to go on the cruise ship.
Yeah, what a shame indeed. It was a different car launch.
It was an actual car launch, which is always nice.
We get to talk a little bit about that.
It's nice to see a Formula One team put some effort into a car launch.
And Alpine in the past have done very dull, dreary press conference room type car launches.
So it's the same thing on a cruise ship.
Tommy, you ruined my joke! I can't be bothered!
I was going to say, so instead they did a dull, dreary one on a cruise ship.
I just tapped the ball in there.
Yeah, you would don't step over this and I just tapped the ball in.
Tommy, all right? Oh, for God's sake.
Anyway, yes, Alpine. Look, let's talk first and foremost about the actual launch itself,
because some talking points from it. Clara Anfo, she's a famous DJ, I believe.
PPC Radio One, all that sort of stuff she hosted.
And I thought we were in for a five hour car launch when I saw
50 cue cards in her hand. It was an actual book in her hand.
And I was like, we're going to talk to every single sponsor on the entire team before we see the car.
You say that. We turned it off after the car launch, so they could still be going at this point.
They probably are.
I don't actually know. But yeah, it was one of those things like,
I'm looking at that going, they've bought Flavio back, who was their team principal
in the early 2000s and gone, let's have an early 2000s car launch.
Because that screams to me of back in that early 2000s era,
I mean, Formula One, roll out the Spice Girls clip every year, don't they, for car launches.
Back when all the Formula One teams had tons and tons of tobacco money and could throw these
extravagant car launches and have these amazing things. And then there'd be a few pictures
in a magazine or whatever. And everyone could be on stage talking about all the sponsors and
the company and everything like that. That to me, it was so early 2000s of a car launch, but
in the era of basically live streams and everyone in the comments going, share the car.
Now, as I said, I'm happy to respect the fact that the teams put a good amount of effort in.
But I also, watching that, they miss the mark so badly in some ways when it comes to the presentation
of that. You just had people, like I say people, of course, members of the team coming up on stage.
You had MSC crew's executive chairman as the initial chat.
Well, he's paying for it, isn't he?
Yeah, I know he's paying for it. But obviously, the main thing is for these brands to
be put in a good light. And you would think they would put someone in front of the camera
that has energy, charisma and can genuinely command an audience in some way.
You have these other team members from Alpine, very monotone, very slow. I'm like,
if you want us to genuinely invest in what you're doing as a team, you've got to put
people in front of camera that obviously know what they're talking about,
but are able to get people to listen because I just muted it.
There has to be something. In this day and age, there has to be something for Formula One teams.
As I mentioned about Flavio Bria Tori and how this feels like a very 2000s era car launch.
We're in the big 2026 now. So much has evolved. We've got the internet. We've got
all these kind of things. The whole world is completely different now.
And I don't even think it's just Alpine. We've seen so many car launches.
You've gone by, look at the Red Bull one. And they still have the executives up.
Red Bull at least tried to do a bit more and they had the goggles and things.
They tried something different. But you feel like, surely,
are they stuck in their ways with these car launches? Does it have to be
a video where it's really quick and it's just like, here's a video that we've done?
Or does it have to be a really long corporate car launch? Surely there's a nice middle ground.
And we have maybe seen that from other teams before. I feel like Williams did that one year
and Ferrari when they launched it on the track was a really cool one.
So yeah, it missed the mark for me. I understand why they did it.
But surely they can still have that moment where they're on this extravagant cruise ship.
They get their sponsor in light and they can show that kind of side off.
But they don't have everyone just sat watching a CEO talk or even like Flavio.
Like why does Flavio need to come out and talk for ages? It didn't really add anything.
It just feels very archaic.
Just have fun with it. As you said, it's 2026. People's attention spans are at the shortest
they've ever been. Have fun with the cruise ship. There's loads of fun things, I'm sure,
on there. They could have had the drivers doing some silly sketches and skits and yeah,
anything like that. I mean, maybe the drivers need to actually also say that they're willing
to do it. But Pierre Gasly, for example, he's a fun character. I know that Alpine clearly
are a lot more serious as a brand. But if you want to capture people's attentions,
do something fun with it, at least in the initial phases, play a bit of volleyball in the swimming
pools. I don't know. I'm getting P1 intro vibes of like Gasly and Colin Pinter on a slide like,
welcome to the Alpine car launch. Wee, there they go down.
Perfect. And I guarantee, if they said welcome and they're on the MSC cruise ship,
everyone would go, wow, that was really funny. Maybe to be fair, it's the
internet, probably half people say it was great. You know what it was for me? It was the
techno music and really upbeat music as someone really slowly wanders up on stage and then it's
like, hello, everybody. Welcome to the... Really excited to be here. Yeah, it's so jarring. I
don't need to be one or the other. Have the corporate thing, but don't maybe stream it and
just let the journalists write it down. But in a bland office all over again.
We know what we're getting if we have it in a really bland room.
But yeah, I mean, that's just our thoughts, right? We're younger and we're more in tune with what's
good on social media and things like that. And that's where the views are these days, right?
This is where everyone talks about it. And surely if you're a cruise ship company,
you want to make a cruise ship look really, really fun to be on. There's something...
Exactly. Speaking of fun, my girlfriend's ringing me, Ellie. Hi.
Hi, you're live on the P1 podcast. I know everybody's going to be really
interested as to why you were ringing me halfway through the Alpine car launch,
but I promise you it'd be more exciting than everything we've just watched.
So what were you ringing to ask me about?
I was just going to ask you what you want for lunch because I thought you might want something.
I would love something for lunch. What's on the table?
Well, I was going to buy a tomato soup because I've got some little flatbread
things. Okay.
So you can have half of that, but I know that most of the time you like to have
an entire soup to yourself. All right. Didn't have to help me like that, did you?
So maybe half a soup might not be enough. You might want something else to go with it.
Fantastic. Or you might want something else entirely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, look, usually we have a back and forth
about this for about 20 minutes. We're not going to do that on this podcast.
So just commit to something and I'll eat it. I appreciate you.
I love you and I'll speak to you in a bit.
Okay. I love you. I'll see you later.
She now hates the fact... You hate the fact that I've now given you that choice, don't
you? But you're now going to be... You're probably just going to get half a soup.
I'm not going to lie to you. Perfect. Can't wait. Thank you. All right.
See you later. Creators of the Year. There we go.
This podcast is sponsored by Heinz... Or in the comments.
Share the food. Where's the food?
Okay. Carrying on question for people on Patreon with Clinton.
For people that are so excited and pumped for the new season,
why did it look like they were all about to say goodbye to a loved one?
It's very fair, though. It's very fair. And it goes back to my point about just
bringing some energy. And I think they had that idea with Clara Anfo,
she's young, she's energetic and that sort of stuff.
But it felt like she was being held at gunpoint to say every word that was on her cue card.
And if not, she was going to be ejected from the cruise ship.
That was the feeling. It was like, so, Flavio, do you think that...
Yeah, it's just... That itself was drawing, right?
It felt like it wasn't a connection with the audience.
It was just we're just... We're basically watching a live stream of two people
talking to each other without knowing the cameras there.
That was sort of what it felt like.
Yeah, definitely. They got it all wrong.
And this is the problem with these things where we complain when it's a video,
we complain when it's a car launch. But we have seen good car launches
that we've really enjoyed and gone that this is what you need to do.
So surely teams, you need to learn from them.
And it makes them look better as well.
Like, it puts them in a better light, as we said.
You want your cruise ship to look like lots of fun.
You want the team to look a lot of fun.
You want to support this team.
Like, you're going to be watching that going...
You think about nowadays as well and drive to survive
and everything, how people are getting into Formula One.
You put that on YouTube and go,
Oh, I might get into Formula One this year.
Well, that's boring.
No, thank you.
I just don't think it just shows anything in a great light, does it really?
Yeah. I mean, look, this next question is about the cruise ship as well.
Who on Patreon remember Jen?
Is launching the car on a cruise ship their way of telling us
it's going to do well in wet conditions?
Or is it that the...
Well, they have shrunk the size of the cars this year
because they've been referred to as cruise ships,
like how big the cars are.
Alpine were really good in the wet, weren't they?
In years gone by they had that race in Brazil
where they were the only good race of the year
and it's a great sponsor tie-in.
But I think, well, we'll get into it later,
but I think Alpine are going to be quite good elsewhere than the wet conditions.
Well, we've been very clear.
We've been very clear about the fact that Alpine should in theory
with everything in place of spending loads and loads of time
developing their car and ignoring last year
and also having Mercedes engine.
But back to the point on the cruise ship,
I will say, obviously the question is a joke.
Why didn't they just do a lap of the cruise ship?
Can you imagine how many millions of views that would have got?
No?
Make a little change, make some space for the car.
Just do a little lap of the cruise ship.
These are the kinds of ideas I bring to the table, right?
Even just roll the car 100 meters.
I don't know.
Something that makes it again a little bit more dynamic,
has a bit more fun with the cruise ship.
I obviously joke about doing a lap around it,
but I think we should be hard-working next year for a challenge designer.
This is what I mean.
It's more dynamic.
There surely has to be something more in a day of this kind of idea
of content and everyone doing things.
And you think how much the content world has evolved in the past 26 years.
And it's still, hello and welcome to the car launch.
Here's a sheet.
Let's take it off.
Let's take that sheet off the cart.
There must be more things you can do than that now.
Do that how he did, right?
They did a cool thing with the Hülkenberg asset,
the massive video of him, and then it was as if he was taking it off
and then it came off.
Like, that's a cool thing.
To be fair, I'm not going to slander the drivers taking the sheet off.
I quite like that as the sort of nod to,
you know, that's part of a car launch as the driver's doing it.
Yeah, traditional.
But everything else needed a big old cruise.
But they should have gone down the slide in the cruise ship
and then like slid past, grabbed the sheet,
then flown by and taken the sheet off.
And then sort of, yeah, then Flavio Breatori comes in
on a trampoline, does a 720 backflip.
And there's a lot of things that could be done here,
which I think are very, very viable options.
Let's go to the livery, shall we?
Took a while to talk about it, but that's because it didn't change.
And I am going to say it didn't need to be changed.
There are people out there on social media,
not particularly happy with the Alpine,
which is generally on social media,
not a lot of happiness these days, ever.
But in terms of the livery, I will absolutely say
that I think it's a good looking livery.
It's a shame how much black slash carbon there is on the nose.
Like I feel like that's where they've gone for most of the 45%
of not painting it is on the front of it.
But I quite like the mix of the blue and the pink.
And it's by no means a bad livery and I quite like it.
I think it looks amazing personally.
I think the fact that I generally think
at the end of the day, we've spoken about Ferrari
and how they have to do certain things
and they've got to appease certain sponsors and stuff.
Same with the Mercedes
and how they were trying to have like too many ideas on one thing.
Essentially Alpine need to show off their corporate colors,
which is that nice shiny chrome kind of blue and pink for BWT.
And genuinely, I don't think they could do a better job
than what they've got.
So they, in my opinion, they perfected it last year.
I think it looked absolutely brilliant.
And they've now just gone, well, we can't improve it.
So let's do it again.
It's amazing, isn't it?
How like it can go from a livery that a lot of people like
and this comes to like, should teams change it every year
or should they mix it up?
And then as soon as people see the same car,
it seems to just, people just forget about
what they actually thought about it initially
and just seem so disappointed and like, no, it's ugly,
it's horrible.
So I like the Alpine.
I think it's a good livery
if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
And only one livery, not two.
Like they love to release the pink edition
for the first three races.
And that's kind of gone now by the looks of things.
For now.
So they are sticking with one as we are aware of it.
Question from people on Patreon about Lex Wakeman.
With the Mercedes power unit,
could this be the resurgence of Alpine?
Well, they're in a good place.
It's, you know, saw a few people saying that,
oh, they didn't mention about, you know,
the Mercedes power unit from their side.
It is a little bit embarrassing to do that
because of course they shut down
their engine program with Renault.
It's not a great look.
They're not going to probably make a big song and dance
about that because it's not a great look
because it's basically them admitting
that their engine department failed
because they were far and away, you know,
the worst engine in that kind of hybrid era.
And they've basically gone, well,
we'll just do what other people are doing now
and take an engine from someone else.
And, you know, rumor has it, it's the best one.
Again, we don't know yet,
but all the talk is that the Mercedes is the best one to have.
So in theory, that should already be a big advantage.
And of course we know as well that Alpine
were one of these teams.
And sometimes this has worked very well.
Sometimes it can also backfire on you
that basically just go,
we don't care how bad we are
because they were absolutely awful last year
and they just go, let's just put all our focus on 26.
So there will be big expectation to do well.
Exactly.
I think we both are reckoning that.
And they chose right by the sounds of it.
Had they gone for a Ferrari engine,
I think we all would be saying very different things
about Alpine's prospects for the future.
And there we go.
That is it.
Thank you everybody for tuning in
to this Alpine cruise ship review.
I hope you've all enjoyed it.
As you can tell, this podcast is not sponsored by MSC Cruises.
And we enjoyed talking about whatever that was that we just watched.
And this is when we find out they did actually
do the 720 backflip on the trap.
I've just gone on the stream
and Flavio's actually on a bouncy castle right now.
Is he? Oh my God.
Wow, fair enough.
Okay.
Well, there you go.
Thank you everybody.
Tommy, final thoughts?
Final thoughts are we're going secret testing very soon.
So can't wait to see or not see any of it.
Yeah.
But we will try to see.
We will be live streaming.
We have, you know, an amazing, amazing picture agency that we use,
which we did last time we tried to find out things.
So we will do our best to do the information that everybody requires.
So indeed, things crossed, we see something
and it's not just a loud stream of our faces for eight hours.
Okay.
Thank you everybody.
See you soon.
Love to take a.
Bye.
Bye.
Request an explanation for:
Request an Explanation
Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.
Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.
Want to learn more?
Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.
See something that's not quite right? Our annotations are AI-generated and can sometimes miss the mark.
Click the flag icon on any annotation to suggest a correction.
