Otmar Szafnauer was the boss of Alpine F1 Racing for just eighteen months before the bosses at parent company Renault decided enough was enough. The Romanian-American had been involved in Formula One since 1998 when he joined the British American Racing team as their operations director.

On their return to Formula One, Honda poached Omar who rose quickly to become Vice President of Honda Racing Developments and a member of the Management Board of the Honda F1 team. When the infamous £1 sale of the team took place to Ross Brawn in 2008, Szafnauer moved to Force India where he remained in senior roles through the transition to Racing Point and the eventual sale to Aston Martin.

 

 

 

Otmar lifts the curtain on shoddy Alpine operation

Following a restructure Otmar was released from the Silverstone team and in February 2022, he joined the BWT Alpine F1 Team as team principal. He then left the team after the Belgium Grand Prix this year right before the summer break.

No team principal can fully have a short term operational effect and so it appears Renault and Alpine have been somewhat shortsighted. The season after Szafnauer left Aston Martin, they came out of the blocks after pre-season testing clearly the second quickest of all the F1 teams.

Having left Alpine behind, Otmar is now able to lift the curtain behind Formula One’s perennial ‘also ran’ team and reveal a number of reason where they should be doing much better.

Within a couple of months, Szafnauer was being forced to deal with a mess of a legacy not of his own making. Having refused to sign Fernando Alonso for the two year deal he demanded, the Spaniard quit the team on the day before the summer break in 2022.

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Alpine could’ve tried harder over Piastri

The team immediately announced they would replace Alonso with academy driver Oscar Piastri who within two hours refuted he was signed to them on X – formerly known as  twitter.

Despite claiming they were entitled to recompense for th investment they’d made in Piastri, Alpine’s legal department had clearly done a poor job in drawing up the contract given the FIA contracts recognition board decided the young Australian was in fact free to leave Enstone and join McLaren for 2023. 

The matter was concluded in just a few weeks but Szafnauer now reveals Alpine chose to give up the fight over Piastri when in fact they could have taken matters much further. “There was a CRB test that landed on the side of Oscar and McLaren, but that’s not the only test,” he told Peter Windsor in an interview this week.

“Had we tested the contract in the English courts, because it was governed by English law, the outcome could have been much different than the CRB. We performed, Oscar didn’t. From a CRB perspective there was an ‘out’. But from an English law perspective, it could have been different. But the decision was made to not continue the fight and just let it be as it is. And that’s okay, that was a decision that I didn’t make. That was a decision that was made for me.”

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Corporate interference a problem

Over the years a number of auto manufacturers have come and gone within F1, some of them failing spectacularly and often for a similar reason. As Gary Anderson recently revealed Ford top down interference and a refusal to accept constructive criticism was their demise when competing as the Jaguar team.

“Owner Ford, or at least the top brass who were involved with the running of the team, didn’t like anyone who stood their ground. Unfortunately, I was one of those people,” Anderson tells the Race.

I think the years after my departure showed that Ford didn’t really have a handle on what it took to make a competitive F1 team. To confirm that the success of Red Bull after its takeover of Jaguar shows that with the right management, commitment and investment for the future success is possible. It’s never easy but when a large conglomerate like Ford gets involved, it simply slows everything down.”

Toyota spent more than any other team during their time in the sport, yet failed to deliver F1 success as did Honda. And these accusations have been placed at the door of Renault over the years, as the French parent company regularly interferes with matters within their F1 team.

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The failing ‘100 race project’

Clearly Sazfnauer was not empowered to decide Piastri was worth chasing through the English courts and the rest is history as after his rookie year, a star has been orb at McLaren – not Alpine.

Otmar was recruited following the bog announcement of Alpine’s “100 race project”. Following its rebrand from Renault, the team took a shock win at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix with Esteban Ocon. This became the platform for then Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi to reveal his vision for the future of the team to f1.com.

“We have a long-term project, the objective is to reach a level of competitiveness that places us on the podium as many times as possible in 2024,” Rossi revealed. “From today in fifth [in the constructors] , you can easily find a roadmap. It’s going to be every year a bit better.

“It’s a 100-race project, four years, four seasons.”

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Cost cap relief for Renault

Of course given the new F1 cost cap, Alpine were bullish about their hopes of making it out of their midfield mediocrity as a works team as their executive director Marcin Budkowski explained.

“There’s opportunity, but equally when people say now there’s a cost cap, everybody spends the same and everybody starts from the same point, that’s not quite true,” said Budkowski.

Yet Rossi believed the incremental gains now possible would add up.“Every race we must make progress. It can be progress you see on the track or progress you don’t see, all the little details,” he said.

“The idea is to never stop – and be able to see we’re going in the right direction.”

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Rossi slams “amateurish” efforts

Given the benefit of the doubt in terms of when the the 100 race project began, Alpine are now around half way up their ‘mountain ascent’ but are no closer to the goals set by their masters in France.

Clearly the executive bosses decided enough was enough and both Budkowski and Rossi have been sacked but not before Rossi revealed the pressure he was under to deliver.

Speaking to French channel Canal+ before qualifying for the 2023 Miami Grand Prix, where Alpine driver Pierre Gasly ironically delivered a season best P5 for the team, Rossi slated the performance so far this year.

“It’s disappointing, it’s actually bad,” he said. “This year ended up starting with a flawed performance and flawed delivery. It’s obvious our position in the standings is not worthy of the resources we spend, and we are quite far – in fact very far – from this year’s end goal.”

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Otmar blamed for lack of performance

Rossi went on to call Alpine’s efforts “amateurish,” questioning the personnel state of mind and claiming they were failing previous standards set by the team.

“We had a team that performed reasonably well last year [2022] and got the fourth position, which is the best improvement we had in a long time. It showed a lot of promise,” said Rossi before turning his ire on team principal Otmar Szafnauer.

“He is responsible for the performance of the team – that’s his job. There is no hiding here. Otmar was brought in to steer the team.”

Szafnauer was recruited by Alpine in February 2022 and admitted he spent much of his first year turning over each stone to see where the team was lacking and could improve. He was sacked two months after the Rossi rant bringing his short 18 month tenure to a close.

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Renault won 1 race in over a decade

To put a few of Rossi’s claims into perspective. The previous standards set by the team were a customer win in the guise of Lotus back in 2012 and 2013 and now ousted Szafnauer reveals other claims made by the former Alpine CEO were misleading too, including the resources.

Speaking to Peter Windsor’s Youtube channel, the ex-Alpine team boss now reveals Renault had seriously underfunded the team

“When I got there, we were double-digit millions below the cap, so we had headroom to hire.”

This means Renault had underfunded the team by at least 10 million and in all likelihood substantially more. A sum which in reality is a paltry number for the French automotive giant. Compare this to the mentality of Mercedes who reportedly spent $1bn in R&D on developing their V6 Turbo hybrid power unit.

“I always had the philosophy of you shouldn’t make change for the sake of change,” Otmar adds. “You need to have a good understanding and make change in areas that you know are going to be better because you’re changing them, and that’s exactly what I did at Alpine.”

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Even Ferrari give team principal 3 years

He continues to outline the departments he set up that didn’t exist on his arrival and the staff who were finally joining the team after serving gardening leave from other F1 competitors.

However, even more significant than the under funding is the nonsensical decision to not give their team principal time to turn things around. Ferrari get criticised for kicking out TP’s after three years and not taking a long term view, Szafnauers 18 months was ludicrous.

Renault are clearly too reactive and need to understand it takes time to even recruit new people and the time from their appointment to having served a year in the business may be 24 months – and only then may their contribution begin to take effect on track.

Alpine finished the 2023 season in sixth place on 120 points – some 160 behind Aston Martin and face a huge struggle to climb back into the top five alone in 2024.

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