There is a logic to it, once you see it. The double-G on the nose of a Formula One car. The green and red stripe, lifted from a saddle girth, running the length of a machine built to travel at 300 kilometres an hour. On May 27, Gucci and Alpine made it official: from the 2027 season, the two will race together, and the sport will never quite look the same.
The deal is historic by any measure. Gucci becomes the first luxury fashion house to hold the title partner position with a Formula One team. The team will race as the Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team. The agreement runs for three years and is valued at approximately 150 million dollars in total, making it one of the largest sponsorship arrangements the sport has ever seen.
Francesca Bellettini, President and CEO of Gucci, framed the move in terms the house has always understood well: desirability, visibility, cultural relevance.
“Gucci Racing is more than a presence on the grid. It is an expression of who we are and where we want to take the brand.”
— Francesca Bellettini, President & CEO, Gucci
Demna, Gucci’s Artistic Director, is personally overseeing the visual identity, the team clothing, and the driver overalls. For a designer who has spent years collapsing the distance between fashion and sport, the brief fits naturally.
The 2027 car will carry Gucci’s signature palette: black, gold, red, and green. A new Gucci Racing logo, the interlocking double-G alongside the wordmark, has already been released. The full livery reveal is expected in early 2027. What is already clear is that the pink of BWT, which dressed the car for five years, is gone. In its place, something considerably older and considerably more deliberate.
Flavio Briatore, Alpine’s Executive Advisor and the man largely responsible for bringing the partnership together, knows this territory. He joined Benetton in 1989 and ran the team through to 1997, making fashion title sponsorship a working reality long before it became fashionable to discuss.
“Partnering with a prestigious brand of Gucci’s calibre as title partner of Alpine Formula One Team is something I am incredibly proud of.”
— Flavio Briatore, Executive Advisor, Alpine F1 Team
The personal history adds a particular weight to what might otherwise read as a press release.
The corporate logic is also worth understanding. Gucci is owned by Kering. LVMH, Kering’s great rival, signed a 10-year global partnership with Formula One in 2024, with Louis Vuitton as the lead brand within it. This is Kering’s answer: not a peripheral sponsorship, but a title. Not a logo on the barrier, but a name above the garage door.
Beyond the branding, Gucci Racing is described as a full platform: bespoke capsule collections, Gucci-designed paddock wear and travel kit for all team personnel, hospitality experiences for Gucci clients at race weekends around the world, and a content series built around the intersection of luxury and motorsport. The ambition is not to decorate a racing team. It is to build something that earns its place in both worlds.
There is a thread here that runs back further than either party has acknowledged. Gucci’s house codes were formed in the stable: the horsebit loafer, the snaffle hardware, the green-red-green stripe drawn from equestrian tradition. The speed is new. The instinct for precision and performance is not.