Renault stalwart Alan Permane on 30 years of stars, success and struggles at Enstone

F1: Beyond The Grid

He joined Benetton in the late 1980s as a bottom-rung mechanic and he’s been with the team ever since, as it morphed into Renault then Lotus and now back to Renault. Alan Permane, Renault’s Sporting Director, has seen and done it all in his time at the Enstone factory. He was Michael Schumacher’s mechanic, Giancarlo Fisichella’s race engineer, and he stepped up to lead the team after the Crashgate scandal. He also had an expletive-filled team radio exchange with Kimi Raikkonen in India. Alan reveals the secrets of Renault’s success in the mid-2000s, and how they’re planning to take on Mercedes with Fernando Alonso in 2022.