F1 News: Otmar Szafnauer Hits Out At Alpine After Shock Dismissal

Alpine has witnessed a major shuffling of its senior leadership with Bruno Famin being placed as VP of Alpine Motorsports while Philippe Krief replaced Laurent Rossi as CEO. What soon followed was the exit of two prominent personalities in the paddock during the Belgian GP- team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane. Speaking out, the former team boss reveals how Renault wanted to get its hand into almost everything. He said that the control was “more than I’ve ever seen before.”

Speaking about the challenges to Chris Medland for The Racer.com, he had to endure and how things are shaping up at Alpine, Szafnauer said:

“The parent company wanted to have a lot of control in a lot of areas of the racing team.

"More than I’ve ever seen before. You know, the commercial area, the marketing area, HR, finance, communication, all that stuff reported not to me, but around me, to somebody else in the bigger organization, and they all act like a navy, and we have to be pirates in order to win.

“So if you say all else equal – the cars [are] equal, the drivers are equal, the powertrain’s equal, your knowledge of the tires is… but what isn’t equal is the fact that a Mercedes or a Red Bull have HR, finance – especially finance now because of the cost cap – all the commercial aspects and communication reporting to Christian [Horner] and we don’t, guess who’s going win? Red Bull.

"And when you look at it that way, it’s really, really easy to understand. If you don’t look at it that way, then you can convince yourself that, ‘Oh yeah, that’s OK. It’s OK that HR doesn’t report through the team principal.

“It’s not OK. It’s not OK at all because if you’re going to hire somebody and you’ve got to get a contract out within a day because that’s what we do in Formula 1, you can’t take two weeks. If it takes you two weeks, maybe that special hire went somewhere else. You’ve got to be pirates.”

Listen To The Latest Driven Mad Podcast Episode

Szafnauer hinted at the fact that the team principal was left powerless and all major decisions were being taken by people in the parent company. What's worse is the amount of time they took to make important decisions- something that doesn't go well with a fast-paced business.

Szafnauer also revealed that Renault Renault CEO Luca de Meo was growing impatient about Alpine's success and wanted the team to be competitive immediately as opposed to a long-term, concrete, and realistic plan Szafnauer had laid out. He said:

“I think the senior management at Renault, the CEO, Luca de Meo, wants, as everyone does in Formula 1, success instantly and unfortunately, that’s not how it works in Formula 1.

“So I pointed out to him that it takes time and the process of doing it, what’s required, and having raced for 34 years – and 26 years of it in Formula 1 – I think I speak with a degree of experience when I say ‘this is what it takes to turn a team around’ and they wanted to do it faster than is possible.

"I couldn’t agree to an unrealistic timeline because if you do that, it’s only a matter of time and everyone gets frustrated, so I laid out a very realistic and possible plan and I think they wanted to shortcut that plan with somebody else.”

The events that have taken place at Alpine are surprising and it only makes me wonder how the team is coping with the pressure from Renault to become competitive 'instantly.'

Add us as a preferred source on Google