Gucci becomes Alpine's title sponsor from 2027, the first luxury-fashion house to take an F1 team name, and the BWT pink era ends on a black-and-gold livery.
Alpine will race as the Gucci Racing Alpine F1 Team from 2027. Per The Race's report on the deal, announced May 26, it is the first time a luxury-fashion house has held the title position on a Formula 1 team, and it closes the BWT relationship that has carried the Enstone car since 2022. The team's place on the official entry list stays "Alpine"; the racing name, the livery, and the commercial identity become Gucci's. Per Motorsport.com's coverage of the announcement, the deal value sits around $50M to $60M per season, with longer-term reporting putting the multi-year figure near $150M.
The livery is where the audience read the deal first. Per GPFans' report on the confirmation, Gucci Racing arrives with a black-and-gold treatment built around the house's interlocked-G logo and a thin red-and-green stripe, the brand's signature web, with Alpine understood to want some blue retained from the current identity. The BWT blue-and-pink that defined the Enstone car across two stints (the 2017-to-2020 Force India and Racing Point era, then 2022 to 2026 at Alpine) ends with it. On r/formula1, the reaction read as an elegy rather than a launch; the most-upvoted comment on the livery gallery was "rest in peace pink cars in F1." A title-sponsor change is a commercial story; the audience processed it as the close of a visual era, which is the more useful signal for where the deal actually lands.
Luxury fashion is now staking F1 from both ends of the grid
The Gucci deal does not arrive in isolation, and the most instructive context is two weekends out. The 2026 Monaco round is officially the Formula 1 Louis Vuitton Grand Prix de Monaco, per Formula 1's published Monaco event listing. Louis Vuitton's parent, LVMH, signed a ten-year global partnership with the championship that began in 2025, placing the house's name above the sport's most-watched single event. Gucci's parent is Kering, LVMH's largest rival in the luxury sector. Inside one season, the two houses that sit at the head of global fashion have each taken an F1 position, LVMH at the series and marquee-event level, Kering's Gucci at the team level. The grid has hosted watchmakers, champagne houses, and fashion-adjacent eyewear brands before. It has not before been the venue where the two largest luxury conglomerates contest brand share against each other.
That framing matters more than the per-season figure. A title sponsorship in the $50M-to-$60M band is meaningful to Alpine, a team that has spent the past year cycling senior leadership and chasing commercial stability, but it is not transformational against a budget-capped grid where the cap itself sits well above that number. What the deal buys Gucci is the thing the money does not measure: a team name, a livery, and a season-long presence in the territory LVMH has just claimed at the top. Per WWD's coverage of the agreement, Gucci framed the move as the launch of "Gucci Racing," a business and experiential platform rather than a logo placement, which is the language of a brand treating F1 as a long-term channel rather than a single-season billboard.
Why Alpine, and why the name and not the budget
Alpine is the logical entry point for a first-time luxury title partner precisely because the team is in transition. The Enstone operation has the heritage, the works-engine question heading into the 2026 power-unit era, and a commercial slot opening as the BWT deal expired. It also has the audience attention that comes with the Franco Colapinto storyline and a grid position that keeps it in broadcast frame without the scrutiny that falls on a front-running team. For a house entering the sport for the first time, a mid-grid team with a name to give is a cleaner proposition than buying secondary branding on a car that already races under a manufacturer or a bank.
The open question is what the livery becomes. On r/formula1, the audience split on whether a black-and-gold Gucci car reads as one of the grid's best liveries or as a loss of the colour the BWT era gave the sport. That is a 2027 question, and the car that answers it will not turn a wheel for another season and a half. The year the championship raced under Louis Vuitton's name at Monaco is the same year Gucci took a team's. Luxury fashion did not enter F1 this season. It arrived from both directions at once.