F1 News: Alpine Dismisses Otmar Szafnauer After The Belgian Grand Prix As Well As Another Huge Director
Alpine has confirmed that team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane will leave the team after the Belgian Grand Prix.
The French team is continuing with their major restructuring which will mark the end of the road for team chief Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane.
The team confirmed in a press release:
"Otmar [Szafnauer] will continue his duties as normal for this weekend’s race in Belgium, before leaving the team ahead of the summer break. The team would like to thank Otmar for his hard work over the past 18 months and for leading the team in achieving fourth place in the 2022 Constructors' Championship. The team wishes him the best for the future.
"The team can also confirm it will part ways with Sporting Director Alan Permane by mutual agreement. Alan will also continue his role this weekend in Belgium before departing ahead of the summer break. After 34 distinguished years at Enstone, the team extends its thanks to Alan and wishes him the best in his future endeavours."
Szafnauer joined the Alpine team in February 2022, however, his time in Formula One started back in 1998 when he became the operations director at British American Racing. The engineer then moved to Honda when the Japanese team returned to the sport in 2001. During his time with Honda, Szafnauer was promoted to vice president of Honda Racing developments and was also a member of the Management Board.
After his exit from Honda in 2008, Szafnauer went down a different route and founded the software company Soft Pauer which developed the official F1 Timing and Track Positioning app.
Making a return to Formula One in 2009, Szafnauer joined Force India where he was a driving force in bringing the team from seventh position in the constructors' championship in 2010 to sixth position in 2011, 2013, and 2014, to a top five finish in 2015 and fourth in 2016 and 2017.
Permane started out in Formula One in 1989 as a test electronics engineer for Benetton before being promoted to a junior race engineer in 1996. Permane was then promoted once again in 1997 to a race engineer. The British engineer stayed in this role until 2006 by which time the team had rebranded to the Renault F1 team.
2007 saw another step up for Permane when he assumed the role of chief race engineer and again in 2011 when he became the chief operating officer. He took on the role of sporting director in 2012 which he has held since through the various rebrands to Lotus F1, back to Renault F1, and finally Alpine.