Renault's Formula 1 team Alpine is worth just under a billion dollars, the French carmaker has announced.

The sport has surged in popularity and value since the commercial takeover and innovations led by Liberty Media, with Forbes recently estimating that the average team has almost quadrupled from $500m in 2019 to almost $2 billion today.

"It is not a trophy investment anymore," Mercedes supremo Toto Wolff told the Financial Times.

"There is economic and financial rationale for sponsors, investors and team owners because, otherwise, people wouldn't do that just for fun."

Indeed, a minority sale at Aston Martin recently gave the Silverstone based team about a $1.3bn valuation, and now 24 percent of Alpine has been sold to a celebrity-linked investor group led by Otro Capital.

In a statement, Renault said the deal values its Alpine team "at around $900 million".

Forbes says the most valuable teams on the grid are Ferrari and Mercedes - each worth almost $4 billion.

"The sport is in tremendous health," Aston Martin's commercial and marketing director Jefferson Slack told the Financial Times.

"It has cracked the US market, and a lot of institutional capital is coming into sports in a big way. It's a good space to be in."
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