Formula One used to be where luxury brands bought hospitality suites, dressed a few drivers and enjoyed being close to the noise. Gucci has decided that it is no longer enough.
From 2027, Alpine will become Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team, with the French outfit replacing its current BWT identity with Gucci’s black, gold, red and green world. It is the first time a luxury fashion house has taken title partnership of an F1 team, which tells you exactly where the sport now sits in the global luxury food chain.
This is not just a logo on a car. Gucci is launching a wider Gucci Racing platform around the deal, covering content, product, high-end client experiences and exclusive events. In other words, the grid is becoming a shop window, a runway, a members’ club and a media machine all at once.
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F1 Is The New Runway
Formula One is no longer just a Sunday sport for petrolheads and people who understand tyre degradation. It has become a global entertainment product with fashion weeks, celebrity grids, Netflix fans, watch brands, champagne, luxury luggage and enough paddock photography to keep Instagram alive for another decade.
That is exactly why Gucci wants in properly. F1 reaches more than 1.5 billion people each season and has become younger, more international and increasingly female. For a luxury house trying to stay culturally hot, that kind of repeated global attention is hard to buy anywhere else.
Gucci also needs moments. The brand has been working to rebuild momentum, and a normal campaign only lasts so long. Formula One gives it 24 race weekends, drivers, celebrities, VIP rooms, limited product drops and a moving billboard that turns up in Monaco, Miami, Singapore and Las Vegas.
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Alpine Gets The Heat It Needed
Alpine gets something just as useful. The team has history, but it has not always had cultural pull. A Gucci title deal instantly makes it more visible, more fashionable and far easier to talk about beyond lap times.
It also arrives at a better moment on track. Alpine had a miserable 2025 but has started 2026 strongly, sitting fifth in the constructors’ standings after five rounds and already beating last year’s points total. Add Gucci to that recovery story and suddenly the team looks less like a midfield project and more like a brand with a plan.
The bigger message is simple. Luxury brands no longer want to sit near Formula One. They want to be part of the show. Gucci has just made that shift impossible to ignore.
