Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney join investors buying into Alpine F1 team

The actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, flush with the success they have brought to Wrexham football club, are expanding their sporting portfolio with an investment in the Alpine Formula One team.

Having been central to the most unlikely rags-to-riches story documented in the enormously popular TV show Welcome To Wrexham, their part in a £157m stake in Alpine is hoped to reap a similar reward in F1 which is enjoying a resurgence in global popularity.

On Monday Alpine, based in the UK at Enstone in Oxfordshire, owned by the car manufacturer Renault and branded after its sportscar range, announced they had sold a 24% stake in the team to a consortium of investors. They include Reynolds, the actor best known for his role in the Deadpool films, and McElhenney one of the lead actors in long-running sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. The pair have also been joined by co-investorMichael B Jordan the lead in the Rocky spin-off, Creed films.

Reynolds and McElhenney had already enjoyed a remarkable success story with their investment in Wrexham. In 2021 the pair purchased the struggling north Wales club then competing in the National League, the fifth tier of English football. The pair wanted to set about transforming the club’s fortunes and filmed their efforts to do so for a documentary series. In April this year Wrexham secured promotion to League Two, after a 15-year absence and Disney announced they were to release a second season of the series.

Neither actor had any experience in running a football club but emboldened by their success have chosen to expand into F1 with Alpine, a team with ambitions to make its own step up into the top levels of the sport. There are no plans yet announced of a series to document