Esteban Ocon has welcomed the investment into Alpine from Hollywood movie star Ryan Reynolds and a high-brow consortium – and is already reaping the rewards.
Reynolds, along with fellow actors Rob McElhenney and Michael B Jordan, are part of ‘The Investor Group’, as it has been named, that has bought a 24 percent stake in Alpine for €200million (AU$326m).
Reynolds co-founded Maximum Effort Investments, and has brought in McElhenney and Jordan as partners in this particular venture, alongside two other investment firms, Otro Capital and Red Bird Capital Partners.
Declaring the move as “fantastic” for Alpine, Ocon wasted no time in getting to know Reynolds who, along with McElhenney, has arguably become as famous for transforming the fortunes of British football team Wrexham as for his acting.
“I was extremely lucky to be able to chat with Ryan on Tuesday,” said Ocon ahead of this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix. “We exchanged a couple of WhatsApps together.
“He told me I was invited onto the set for the (new) Deadpool movie in London, so I’m definitely going.
“He also said he was very much looking forward to learning from our world, seeing how things work, and just having a racing chat together.”
Declaring himself to be “a massive comics and Marvel fan in general, and a massive Deadpool fan”, Ocon added: “He (Reynolds) is just someone that is very inspiring in what he does.
“Outside of his acting world, I think he’s an extremely talented businessman as well, and I’m very much looking forward to being able to meet him and have a chat with him properly.”
Further expanding on the nature of his initial conversation with Reynolds, Ocon added: “On Tuesday I was in the simulator, and I usually take my phone to take notes from all the runs and to have that on the record.
“That time I allowed myself to send a little picture to Ryan saying ‘I’m live from the simulator. This is the view.’ And he liked that.
“I said ‘Welcome to the team” to him and straight away he said ‘Hi Esteban. I’m very much looking forward to learning from you and meeting you’, and he sent me his phone number, and email address and we then texted on WhatsApp, so really good.”
The combination of the trio of investment arms carries vast knowledge of the sports industry, with their expertise seen as crucial in boosting Alpine’s media and marketing strategy, which will in turn support the team’s sporting performance in the long term.
“I think all that Ryan has done recently with his company has been extremely successful,” said Ocon. “There haven’t been any failures that I know of. So he’s a very good asset, him and his team behind our team.
“As a whole, all the investors are going to bring their expertise into the team, and it really shows the dedication of the team to push forward on every aspect.
“Obviously, that’s not going to help on the performance of the car itself, but on every other aspect that we can improve, we are going to have these investors’ expertise where they excel, basically.”
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