- Alpine F1 sits sixth in the Constructors’ Championship, 57 point behind fifth-place McLaren.
- On the Friday of the Belgian Grand Priz, Alpine announced the exits of Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and Sporting Director Alan Permane.
- At this point it’s clear Alpine is not going to be fighting for a title before the 2025-26 timeframe outlined by Szafnauer.
It has been a year since Alpine was thrust into the center of the Formula 1 news cycle when Fernando Alonso upped sticks and left for Aston Martin before prospective replacement Oscar Piastri spurned a promotion having already signed for McLaren.
Alpine’s management took digs at the pair, unfairly questioning the loyalty of youngster Piastri, as attack proved its best form of defence. It was a complex situation but Alpine succeeded in losing a two-time world champion and its highly-rated protégé in one swoop.
As of this year’s summer break, Alonso sits in third in the Drivers’ Championship with a rejuvenated Aston Martin, having taken six podium finishes.
The understated Piastri had to bide his time but McLaren’s sizeable mid-season gains—which it promised pre-season after conceding it initially messed up—has allowed the Australian to show his talent, most notably with a front-row start and second place in Belgium’s Sprint event.
Alpine entered 2023 aiming to retain fourth place in the championship while narrowing the gap to Formula 1’s long-standing big three: Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes.
It has instead been leapfrogged by Aston Martin, which has firmly joined the battle for second-best behind the runaway Red Bulls, and has been overtaken by a resurgent McLaren.
Alpine is sixth in the Constructors’ Championship, facing a 57-point deficit to fifth-place McLaren, the same advantage it has over seventh-placed Williams.
Still, it hasn’t been an unmitigated disaster. Alpine has shown glimpses of promise—and took a podium in Monaco—but there’s clearly pressure from the very top, and that has spiraled into the current situation.
The Shake-Up
Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi was displeased after just four races, loading both barrels during select interviews with F1’s website and L’Equipe in Miami, which he proceeded to unload on the F1 team and Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer. Rossi’s tactics, understandably, went down like a lead balloon.
Rossi, who joined in 2021, was moved aside to “special projects” in late July. His successor as CEO, Philippe Krief, “shouldn’t have an impact whatsoever” on the F1 team, said Szafnauer at the time, because his focus would be on Alpine Cars.
Szafnauer added that existing engine chief Bruno Famin taking on the role of vice president of Alpine Motorsport “will just mean that we’re more like-minded in the way we go forward” because of Famin’s previous work at Alpine.
On the Friday of the Belgian Grand Prix, Alpine announced the exits of Szafnauer and Sporting Director Alan Permane, while Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry also left after being courted to take the same role at Williams.
Former Alpine F1 Team Principal, Otmar Szafnauer.
Szafnauer was the headline departure, but Permane had been at Enstone for 34 years—through its various guises that included title-winning highs and near-bankruptcy lows—and was a loyal and popular figure who garnered respect. Few in Formula 1 could remember so many senior figures from one team departing mid-weekend.
“I had a timeline in mind for changing the team, making it better,” said Szafnauer, who only joined from Aston Martin in advance of the 2022 season, as quoted by RACER. “That timeline, I thought it was realistic, because I know what it takes.
“I think some of the senior management at Renault had a shorter timeline in mind. I’ve always said Mercedes took five years from buying a winning team. Red Bull took five years from buying Jaguar, which was a pretty solid mid-grid team. It takes time. That’s what it takes.”
Shifting Plans
Szafnauer has not always shined in his 18 months at Alpine—particularly in the Piastri case (and even then it was not all his own doing)—but he has experience maximizing the efficiency of a mid-grid outfit from his time at Force India/Racing Point.
And he’s right regarding long-term plans. The likes of Aston Martin and McLaren have been spending several years laying the foundations to fight at the front by 2025, while Sauber is preparing for Audi’s arrival in 2026, which was announced in summer 2022.
Szafnauer’s stance on the split was supported by Famin, who was installed as interim team principal, a move that is meant to instill confidence that a company knows precisely what it’s doing.
“We were not on the same line… on the timeline to recover the level… or to reach the level of performance we are aiming for,” Famin confirmed.
Alpine is not going to be fighting for a title before the 2025-26 timeframe outlined by Szafnauer. It is hard to know whether the belief it can be accelerated is arrogance or delusion—or a combination of both—and whether the corporates higher up at Renault have ever looked at how successful Formula 1 teams are forged.
Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner knows a thing or two about winning.
Why was the 100-race plan—which replaced the previous five-year plan—lauded, then suddenly deemed insufficiently quick not even midway through, then its architects deemed out-of-sync with expectations, including a team boss only hired 18 months ago?
“To win in Formula 1 you have to have the right culture and that has to come from the top down,” said Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner in Belgium, who knows a thing about winning.
Building everything takes time in Formula 1: the optimum use of top facilities, a strong management structure with defined roles, the right ethos and culture, the right drivers, the right technicians, engineers and mechanics.
Lack of Investment
Renault, and Alpine, have so far been only masters of instability, and have let down good and hard-working personnel further down the chain.
Renault is a major automotive brand yet has never fully invested in its Formula 1 team since its return as a works outfit in 2016. When it rebranded as Alpine for 2021, it was seen as a fresh start, in order to promote its niche sports car brand, but it was also an attempt at wiping the failure of the Renault team.
It still lacks the facilities and resources of its front-running rivals. There is infrastructure being upgraded, and a new simulator was approved in recent months, but it begs the question as to why Renault wasn’t doing this years ago.
And it still has one of the smallest motorhomes in the paddock, which may be just a cosmetic aspect, but says a lot about status and identity.
‘Team Enstone’ Results
- 2016: 9th, 8 points
- 2017: 6th, 57 points
- 2018: 4th, 122 points
- 2019: 5th, 91 points
- 2020: 5th, 181 points (3 podiums)
- 2021: 5th, 155 points (1 win, 1 podium)
- 2022: 4th, 173 points
- 2023: 6th, 57 points (1 podium)
Famin, anyway, was crystal clear on the next target for Alpine:
“What is happening is the second stage of the Alpine [plan], if I may say,” he said. “It’s not going backwards, it’s moving forwards. Of course, it’s a lot of change. But it’s an opportunity also, to have a new foundation, or to consolidate the foundation and to go farther and faster.
“The key objective is the one I mentioned recently: We need to win, we aim for winning races and championships as soon as possible. We need to constantly improve our cars, the full package, from race to race, from year to year.
“And we know that it’s not easy. We know that the change of regulation is generally a good milestone for changing the ranking. And I think it’s quite a reasonable target, but it will not be a step, it’s improving constantly up to that.”
New engine regulations—and yet-to-be-defined chassis rules—means 2026 is the next milestone for those teams harboring title ambitions. Yet out of all of the prospective outfits striving to climb Formula 1’s summit, Alpine looks to be starting lower down the mountain.
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