Former Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer has criticized the team’s Renault owners for putting more emphasis on the length of their careers than success in F1.
Appearing on former F1 broadcaster Jake Humphrey’s High Performance podcast, Szafnauer spoke about his year and a half as team principal of the Alpine team, including his sacking at the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix weekend and the resulting Oscar loss. Explained the cancellation of Piastri’s contract. The Australian was caught in a tug-of-war between Alpine and McLaren.
The Romanian-American claimed he was informed before he joined Alpine in early 2022, replacing former figurehead Marcin Budkowski, that he would be given the necessary management powers over all parts of the F1 team.
Once involved, Szafnauer realized that this was not the case. Instead, several departments reported directly to the French Renault board.
“There are a few things that didn’t work out at Alpine. One of them was that I didn’t have control over the whole team. HR didn’t report to me. HR was reporting through France. ”
“The finance department didn’t report to me. The communications department didn’t report to me. The marketing group and the commercial department didn’t report to me.
“I knew that in itself would be problematic. Before I took the job, everyone (was told) they’d report to me. I’d get there and it wouldn’t be me. I thought I could handle it, but it just went away.”I knew it was a problem. ”
Otmar Szafnauer, Alpine F1 Team Team Principal
Photo credit: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Szafnauer said the 2021 F2 champion did not have a valid contract with Alpine when the team lost its claim in the Contract Approval Commission litigation with McLaren over Piastri. He explained that the problem had come to a head.
Explaining that the crux of the issue occurred in November 2021, several months before joining, Szafnauer said he intended to be the downfall after losing to Piastri.
“It (the contract) was never signed. I started in March. I didn’t know anything. They didn’t file the CRB paperwork correctly and the contract was never signed. did.”
“There was a two-week window in that November where we could have done it but we didn’t. Then came the CRB that Alpine lost because their declaration was wrong.
“We put out a press release, and my image was on it. And it had nothing to do with me, I wasn’t even in it!
“The PR department, which did not report me, thought it would be a good idea to put my photo in the release to deflect the incompetence of the people they were supporting at the time.
“The person who actually posted the photo worked for me at Force India, so I went to her and said, ‘You know better,’ and she said, ‘ I’m sorry, I was asked to do this.’
“But at the time it just showed that there were some people within the Alpine organization that I couldn’t trust and were out to get me.
“They didn’t work with me. And when you don’t care about the team’s performance, you care about your power base more than the team’s performance and those types of things. It’s time to do it.”
“At Ford, we hope we’re no longer in this situation, but there was a saying back in the day: ‘Ford Motor Company didn’t make cars. We built careers.’ It means putting more emphasis on your career.”
“And that’s not the case in F1, but it could be if you bring in a lot of people from the Renault Group, who are currently in charge of F1 teams, for example.
“I don’t care about my performance on the track, I care about my career. And if that’s the case, I’ll make those decisions.”
