Otmar Szafnauer Reveals Shocking Details From His Tenure As Alpine Team Boss

Saajan Jogia | 11 Hours Ago

Oct 21, 2023; Austin, Texas, USA; BWT Alpine F1 driver Esteban Ocon (31) of Team France drives during the Sprint Race of the 2023 United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images / Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

Former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer shed light on his tenure at the Enstone-based outfit, admitting he never had "full control" over the team. He also acknowledged that many within the team prioritized their job security over improving the team's performance in Formula 1.

Szafnauer explained that internal politics reached its peak when the team failed to sign then-reserve driver Oscar Piastri, leading him to join hands with the McLaren F1 team for a full-time F1 seat. However, Alpine still released a statement with Szafnauer's photo on the release, without his knowledge.

What surprised the 60-year-old team boss upon joining Alpine in March 2022 was that all departments within the team reported to its parent company, Renault, despite being promised before joining that they would report to him. Speaking on the High Performance podcast, he said:

"There's a few things that went wrong at Alpine. One of which was I didn't have control over the entire team: HR didn't report to me, it reported up through France.

"The finance office didn't report to me. The communications department didn't report to me and the marketing group and commercial didn't report to me.

"And that in itself, I knew it was going to be problematic. Before I took the job, it was [said] everybody's reporting to me. I get there and that's not the case. I thought I could manage it, but I soon knew that it's problematic."

Regarding the Piastri case, the Contract Recognition Board (CRB) ruled in McLaren's favor, concluding that Piastri did not have a concrete contract with Alpine. The issue dated back to November 2021, well before Szafnauer became team principal. Despite his lack of involvement, Alpine issued a press release with Szafnauer's photo, associating him with the situation. He explained:

"It [the contract] was never signed. I started in March. I had no idea. They didn't submit the CRB documents correctly and never signed a contract with them.

"In that November, there was a two-week time window where it could have been done and it wasn't. Come the CRB where Alpine lost because of the filings were incorrectly done.

"We put out a press release, and it has my image on it. And it was nothing to do with me, I wasn't even there!

"The communications department that didn't report to me thought it was a good idea to deflect the incompetency of those that were helping at the time by putting my picture on the release.

"The person who actually put the picture on worked for me at Force India, so I went to her and said 'you know better than this'. And she said 'I'm sorry, I was told to do this.'

"But it just showed at the time that there are some people within the Alpine organisation that were untrustworthy and were out to get me."

He added:

"They weren't working with me. And when you don't care about the performance of the team, what you care about is your power base more than the performance of the team, that's when you do those types of things.

"At Ford, and hopefully it's not like this anymore, but we used to have a saying that 'Ford Motor Company didn't make cars. It made careers', which means you care more about your career.

"And that's not the case in Formula 1, but it can be the case if you get a bunch of people from, say, the Renault Group now being put in charge of a Formula 1 team.

"You don't care about on-track performance, you care about your career. And if that's the case, you make those types of decisions."