How Alpine’s ‘biggest problem’ cost team boss Otmar Szafnauer his job

A former colleague of the ousted Otmar Szafnauer believes the team boss was forced out due to Alpine’s “biggest problem” – one that won’t be fixed soon.

Alpine head into the second half of the Formula 1 season with a new day-to-day boss in the form of Bruno Famin, who has taken over in an interim capacity following the ‘mutual’ separation of the team from former team boss Otmar Szafnauer.

The two parties failed to see eye to eye on a path to success and, just a few short days after Szafnauer had expressed confidence in Alpine CEO Luca de Meo keeping true to his word of giving him sufficient time to mould the team in his image, he and Alpine went their separate ways – Szafnauer followed out the door by Enstone stalwart Alan Permane as sporting director.

Matt Bishop identifies Alpine’s “biggest problem” that cost Otmar Szafnauer

Speaking inhis column for Motorsport Magazine, a prominent former Formula 1 public relations chief outlined his views on the matter – speaking from a position of authority having been a recent colleague of Szafnauer when both worked with Aston Martin in 2021.

Matt Bishop, who was the team’s head of communications at a time when Szafnauer oversaw the Aston Martin team as Lawrence Stroll began the extensive rebrand from Racing Point, shared his thoughts on Szafnauer’s dismissal.

“[Alpine]’s mission, as enshrined in its 2021 Renault-to-Alpine rebrand comms strategy and often shared with the world’s F1 journalists thereafter, had been to return to its world championship-winning ways in 100 races’ time; five seasons, give or take a race or two; in 2026, in other words,” Bishop wrote.

“Was it realistic? I would describe it as difficult but feasible. It will not be possible sooner, under the current PU (power unit) formula, not least because it is a matter of fact, as recorded on the agenda and in the minutes of a recent Formula 1 Commission meeting, that the power outputs of the Ferrari, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz PUs are within 1kW of one another, while Alpine’s Renault PU languishes on its own 15kW behind. That is just over 20bhp. The new PU formula will not come into effect until 2026.”

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94 years of experience between Szafnauer, Fry, and Permane

But while the engine deficit – a disparity that came about under the watch of now-team boss Famin as executive director of the Renault power unit department at Viry-Chatillon, is not the main issue preventing Alpine’s success, Bishop believes.

“That 15kW/20bhp power deficit was not – and is not – the once super-successful Oxfordshire-based team’s biggest problem,” he said.

“No, its biggest problem is that it is supervised by corporate ‘suits’ not in England but in France, who have little knowledge or understanding of F1.

“If you bought a football team, would you hire orchestral conductors to manage it for you? No.

“If you were on the board of a basketball franchise, would you ask your headhunters to find executives with experience in the mining industry? No. Do lawyers make good doctors? No. Yet Alpine jettisoned Szafnauer (team principal) and Alan Permane (sporting director) purely because, expert and realistic as they both were and are, they refused to be browbeaten by French ‘suits’ who had never worked in F1 before into accepting an accelerated plan that dictated that world championships must be conjured out of nothing and nowhere in no time.”

With Williams havingsuccessfully snaffled Alpine chief technical officer Pat Fry out of Enstoneto join Grove, Bishop said the experienced engineer likely saw the writing on the wall.

“Pat Fry (chief technical officer) found an escape,” he said.

“He has just joined Williams — before he would surely also have been axed. Between the three of them, they have 94 years of experience in F1.”

Bishop says he has no doubt that the combined talents of the three departed senior staff will create further problems for the Enstone-based team.

“Szafnauer is a very capable leader,” he said.

“I worked with Fry at McLaren — he was both able and collaborative. I know Permane well — indeed I once bought a Porsche 911 from him — and I rate him highly.

“Losing from the heart of the Alpine F1 operation that cumulative near-century of experience, and the expertise it brought with it, will cause a seismic rupture. Morale is already now low at Enstone. Confusion now reigns there. Other teams will now be looking to cherry-pick the best of those who remain. They will accept any reasonable offers, and can you blame them?”

Why Alpine have created a diametrically opposite work environment to World Champions

Bishop went on to compare the atmosphere that has been created at Alpine to that of Red Bull, saying the reigning World Champions take a completely different approach to treating their personnel to how Renault have proceeded.

“One of [Otmar’s] buzz-phrases was ‘psychological safety’,” he said.

“It is valuable and important in any workplace, and particularly in an environment such as F1, where the pressure to succeed is so high. If you foster an atmosphere and culture of psychological safety among a workforce, you allow your people the latitude to dare to try.

“If they dare to try, they may sometimes fail, but they will only dare to try if they know that honest failure will not be punished. If they cannot be certain of that, they will not dare to try because they will not dare to fail. The consequence of that is that they will not dare to succeed either.

“The result is then a timid and inert acceptance of the performance status quo, perpetuated by a widespread fear of being noticed in any way: in other words the diametric opposite of the feverish collective ambition that an F1 team needs to win.

“By contrast, Red Bull may seem frighteningly competitive when viewed from the outside, but one of the reasons why its engineers are able to work so innovatively, and therefore so successfully, is that they know their bosses will not chastise them for voicing disruptive questions or concerns, or censure them for conceiving and developing radical technical hypotheses. Psychological safety, in other words.”

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