Gucci names sports executive Tancredi Vitale to lead racing push

Gucci has named Tancredi Vitale vice president of Gucci Racing, effective Sept. 1, and the move looks less like a routine fashion hire than a signal that luxury wants a bigger seat at motorsport’s table. Vitale is coming in from Venezia Football Club, where he was managing director, just as Gucci turns its racing play into a wider commercial platform.

Vitale brings a résumé built far outside the usual fashion-house lane. Before Venezia, he held leadership roles at Kappa, Adidas Y-3 with Yohji Yamamoto, Nike and Jordan, and spent more than 13 years at Nike’s headquarters in Portland, Oregon. That background matters. Gucci is not just hiring someone who understands aesthetics and brand image, it is hiring someone who knows sports as an ecosystem, with sponsorship, product, fan culture and retail all working at once.

The appointment sits inside Gucci’s title partnership with the Alpine Formula 1 Team, announced in late May 2026. Alpine is scheduled to race under the name Gucci Racing Alpine Formula One Team from the start of the 2027 FIA Formula One World Championship, making Gucci’s F1 move the first time a luxury fashion house has served as title partner of an F1 team. Giovanni Perosino remains the senior vice president leading Gucci Racing, while also staying on as Gucci’s SVP of marketing.

The real story is bigger than a logo on a car. Gucci Racing is being positioned as a business and experiential platform built around performance, precision, discipline and excellence, with plans that stretch beyond Formula 1 into tennis, winter sports, equestrian and other territories. That is the kind of structure luxury brands now chase when they want more than visibility: they want brand heat, customer engagement and new business opportunities that can spill into product, hospitality and licensing.

That strategy makes sense in a paddock where Formula 1 has become a serious fashion and luxury magnet, not just a sport. Gucci is moving in the same direction as LVMH, which has deepened its presence through names like TAG Heuer, Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy. In that race, a sports executive like Vitale matters more than another traditional fashion insider, because Gucci is not simply dressing the moment. It is building a sports franchise with a luxury spine.