Are the wheels coming off at Alpine F1 racing? Photo / Don Kennedy
Being a Formula One team boss is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has added a new meaning to the saying of taking a break, by breaking his elbow in a mountain biking accident, one day into a three-week summer holiday.
Reports indicate his injury won’t prevent his attendance at the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort on August 27. It must be difficult for team principals to take a proper break, especially halfway through a season, such is the pressure to ensure their teams keep moving forward in terms of performance. One team boss who will be missing at Zandvoort is Alpine F1 Racing leader Otmar Szafnauer. It was announced halfway through the Belgian GP that the team was dispensing with his services with immediate effect, including the team’s sporting director, Alan Permaine.
F1 team bosses are, it seems, as vulnerable as Premier League managers, whose job security seems to depend on whether the team is winning or not. In Szafnauer’s case, it seems there was a difference of opinion regarding where the team was headed. Last year, Alpine did remarkably well, securing fourth place in the Constructors’ title race, surely enough for the team to retain Szafnauer’s services for 2023 and beyond.
But his problems essentially began in July last year when, after the 2022 Belgian GP, he lost the driving services of Fernando Alonso, who had returned to F1 in 2021 with Alpine, formerly known as the Renault team with whom Alonso won back-to-back world championships in 2005 and 2006. Alonso helped develop the Alpine car and played a key role in holding up Lewis Hamilton at the 2021 Hungarian GP, which enabled his teammate Estaban Ocon, to take his and the team’s first Grand Prix victory under the Alpine umbrella.
Alonso had wanted a two-year extension to his contract, but Szafnauer, with mutterings about Alonso’s age, would only confirm a one-year extension, with an option for the following year. But when Sebastian Vettel announced he was retiring from F1 at the end of that year, Alonso saw an opportunity. He wasted no time in obtaining Vettel’s drive with Aston Martin, securing a two-year contract. It is of course apparent now that Alonso, who had his 42nd birthday in Belgium, has proved that age is no barrier, scoring six podium finishes and helping Aston Martin hang on to third place in the Constructors battle.
Szafnauer was not worried about Alonso’s pending departure because he believed he had young Australian Oscar Piastri, at the time the team’s reserve driver, waiting in the wings. But Piastri shocked the Alpine team, and the F1 world generally, by stating he would not be an Alpine driver in 2023.
He had signed a contract to replace Daniel Ricciardo at McLaren. His manager is former Red Bull driver Mark Webber, and you have to say that he and his charge Piastri played a blinder. The Piastri-McLaren partnership is really starting to pay off, because, despite an inauspicious start, Piastri is now beginning to fulfil the promise that had some people calling him a world champion in waiting.
His second place behind world champion Max Verstappen in the sprint race at Spa underlines that potential, and also the loss that his Alpine team must now be feeling. It would be easy to blame Szafnauer for the loss of a former world champion, and a possible future world champion, from under his clutches. But Szafnauer insists his departure is not related to his handling of his drivers last year.
“Yeah, it was definitely mutual,” he claimed, in respect of his surprise departure. “I laid out the timelines as to how long it takes in F1 to effect change. You know, it’s not a football team - it’s only two [drivers] and 998 technicians, engineers and aerodynamicists, and to change a culture takes time.”
“The timeline wasn’t accepted by the bosses of Renault - they wanted it quicker and that’s what we disagreed upon. So, yeah, mutual.”
Those Renault bosses have seen the departure of a number of key personnel in recent years. Polish engineer Marcin Budkowski began in F1 as an aerodynamicist with Prost GP in 2001 and was an executive director at Renault, which became Alpine, until January 2022, when he left. He was quickly followed by Alain Prost, who had joined Renault in an advisory role similar to the one the late Niki Lauda enjoyed at Mercedes.
Prost had a falling-out with Renault CEO Laurent Rossi, because he felt there was too much corporate interference in the F1 team. He says history shows that F1 teams need a “simple structure detached from an industrial organisation chart”.
He has now accused Rossi of “incompetence”.
“During my years at Renault, how many times have I heard in the corridors of the headquarters in Boulogne-Billan court that F1 was a simple sport that could be run from home by men in place,” Prost said last week.
“Big mistake, as proven by the last of the leaders, Laurent Rossi, from whom Luca de Meo [Renault chief executive] separated a week ago. Rossi is the finest example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, that of an incapable leader who thinks he can overcome his incompetence by his arrogance and his lack of humanity towards his troops.”
“I love this team and seeing it in this state today saddens and distresses me.”
Prost made reference to how Ferrari worked with Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher, and Mercedes’ success with Toto Wolff, backed by Lauda, James Allison and Hamilton.
“Red Bull, even if a major manufacturer does not back it, do the same. It is Christian Horner and Adrian Newey who manage their drivers, Sebastian Vettel and now Max Verstappen.”
“They had the codes of F1, the agility and flexibility to let their men make the decisions.”
Alpine are currently sixth in the Constructor’s points table at the halfway point in the championship. Prost is not the only former team owner to express his dismay at what seems like Alpine’s self-destruction as a team. Paul Stoddart, who owned the Minardi team that gave Alonso his first F1 drive in 2001, has echoed Prost’s criticism.
“Alpine has made a big, big mistake,” Stoddart says. “To effectively get rid of top management, I can’t see the sense in that, and also don’t know who they have recruited to take over. By all accounts, the new interim team principal Bruno Famin has no experience. When he walks into his first meeting of the Piranha Club, it’ll be like a lamb to the slaughter.”
Szafnauer seems unperturbed about his personal situation.
“Personally, I’ll be fine,” he told Motorsport.com. “I’m just worried about the wonderful men and women at Enstone and Viry, who work hard and do a good job. I hope their future is bright.”
“There were people, not so much me, crying and saying goodbye. I was telling them, ‘Look, I’m still alive. I didn’t die. I’m going to be fine.”
One person not too interested in the woes at Alpine is Alonso, the driver they only wanted for one more year and who seems to be having the last laugh when asked what he thought about his former team’s situation.
“I don’t look too much!” he said in reference to his decision to swap teams.
“Obviously you never know that, it would be nice to have a crystal ball before you made a decision in switching teams, you know the future. But at the end, I’m happy where I am and there is a project here into the future and I’m very proud.”
“Not thinking too much into the future, thinking about these years only. The target is to keep growing as a team. We are finding some obstacles right now. We are dealing with some extra performance from our opponents, our lack of performance in certain circuits and these kinds of things.”
“I am happy but still obviously room to improve. Only the six months with the team and still there is more to come.”
Alonso must be feeling relieved he is not caught up in the Alpine political turmoil and made the right move at the right time, adding: “it’s not about youth, its about going fast”.
“Incredible, a dream, the first half of the season. We are P3 in the Constructors ‘championship in front of Ferrari, we are P3 in the Drivers’ championship together with Lewis. It was impossible to think this way in Bahrain.”
He could have added: impossible to imagine the Alpine team would be left in disarray at a time when their car is improving, but like Humpty Dumpty, the team have had a great fall and the new management may not be able to put the broken pieces back together again.
Sources: F1.com, Aston Martin.
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