Italian soccer journalist and modern-day soothsayer, Fabrizio Romano has decided to add a new sport to his repertoire. While he normally remains within the confines of the soccer transfer market, he recently announced that French Formula 1 driver Pierre Gasly will join BWT Alpine F1 Team for next season.
Different kind of Here we go today! For some minutes I’ll be into Formula 1. I understand Pierre Gasly will join BWT Alpine F1 Team from Alpha Tauri from the end of the season.
Personal terms all signed and an official announcement is expected in the coming hours. pic.twitter.com/jPA6tKNnlZ— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) October 7, 2022
For many who may not be familiar with Formula 1, teams are allowed to sign new drivers at any point in the year but often use the late summer and early fall as the time to make their decisions. This period is informally referred to as the “silly season” and is unofficially kicked off when the first driver is signed for the following campaign. Like dominoes, teams must fill gaps left by their own drivers leaving, creating a game of musical chairs, where the chairs are spots of the following year’s F1 grid.
To quickly summarize this year’s silly season, four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel announced he will be retiring after this season, so his current team, Aston Martin, signed Alpine driver Fernando Alonso, who himself has won two world championships.
Alpine tried to react quickly by announcing the signing of its junior driver and last year’s F2 champion, Oscar Piastri. Unbeknownst to them, however, Piastri has already signed a deal to race for McLaren where he would replace fellow Aussie, Daniel Ricciardo.
As a result, Alpine still has a race seat to fill, or at least it did until Romano broke the news that Pierre Gasly, who previously raced for Red Bull and now is the main driver for sister team, Alpha Tauri, will be driving for Alpine in 2023. F1 Twitter reacted with bewilderment and delight to see one of the most respected names in soccer transfer news making the switch for a day, and at the time of writing, the post has already received over 100,000 likes and more than 16,000 re-tweets.
On another timeline Fabrizio Romano is an F1 ITK breaking football news
This is just a crossover episode https://t.co/gIbKUA3B7x— Link Up Arsenal (@LinkUpArsenal) October 7, 2022
F1 fans pretending to know who Fabrizio Romano is #F1 #JapaneseGP https://t.co/y0uY3hAsBO pic.twitter.com/q5X9DiZowg
— F1 Portrayed By Top Gear (@TopGearFormula1) October 7, 2022
Fabrizio tweeting about F1 https://t.co/GwOsOGcNNv pic.twitter.com/KXGzuZ3HMe
— Umar (@umar04_) October 7, 2022
With so few teams in F1, it seems somewhat reasonable that Romano may be able to keep his foot in the door of motorsport transfers. Just as he was right with the controversial news regarding Chelsea’s summer signing of Marc Cucurella, this news also seems to be factually accurate as Pierre Gasly himself has liked the tweet, and Alpine has commented on the post.
Seeing this tweet "Liked by Pierre Gasly" makes this official #F1 https://t.co/nWbmZOdq8P pic.twitter.com/TXQjYR4K6A
— Spare Parts Racing (@SparePartsRacin) October 7, 2022
— BWT Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) October 7, 2022
According to Romano, an official announcement is coming shortly, but as soccer fans will already be well aware, an announcement from Fabrizio Romano is as close to a guarantee as you will ever get.
