Otmar Szafnauer takes huge swipe at Alpine management after sudden departure

Otmar Szafnauer has spoken out about his misgivings at Alpine’s leadership, after his abrupt departure from the team a fortnight ago.

The ex-team principal at Alpine was confirmed to be leaving on the eve of the Belgian Grand Prix along with ‘Team Enstone’ stalwart Alan Permane, in a move that caused heavy criticism of the team from different figures in the sport.

Four-time World ChampionAlain Prost in particular gave a withering assessmentof what is happening with his former employers, saying it “saddens and distresses” him to see them in disarray.

Otmar Szafnauer does not understand Renault’s desire for hands-on control at Alpine

Szafnauer departed as Aston Martin team boss to head to Alpine after his worries that “two Popes” were in charge, leaving him without the autonomy he needed to do his job as team principal.

Having spoken about what he experienced at Alpine, it seems he suffered some of the same issues – with parent company Renault taking charge of areas that he would normally oversee.

He used an example of trying to hire staff from other teams as an example of where operations need to be streamlined, but with several departments having not reported directly to him, he claims he did not have the speed he needed to act where needed.

“The parent company wanted to have a lot of control in a lot of areas of the racing team,” Szafnauer told SiriusXM’s Cars & Culture with Jason Stein.

“More than I’ve ever seen before. You know, the commercial area, the marketing area, HR, finance, communication, all that stuff reported not to me, but around me, to somebody else in the bigger organisation, and they all act like a navy, and we have to be pirates in order to win.

“如果你说一切平等——汽车[是]装备al, the drivers are equal, the powertrain is equal, your knowledge of the tyres is…

“But what isn’t equal is the fact that a Mercedes or a Red Bull have HR, finance – especially finance now because of the cost cap – all the commercial aspects and communication reporting to Christian [Horner] and we don’t, guess who’s going win? Red Bull.

“And when you look at it that way, it’s really, really easy to understand. If you don’t look at it that way, then you can convince yourself that, ‘Oh yeah, that’s OK. It’s OK that HR doesn’t report through the team principal.’

“It’s not OK. It’s not OK at all because if you’re going to hire somebody and you’ve got to get a contract out within a day because that’s what we do in Formula 1, you can’t take two weeks.

“If it takes you two weeks, maybe that special hire went somewhere else. You’ve got to be pirates.”

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Otmar Szafnauer tells Alpine quest for instant success ‘not how it works’ in Formula 1

With Alpine partway through their ‘100-race plan’ to get to the front, it seems that the aims to be competing for race victories from within were on a faster timeline, according to the former team boss.

Given the experience he has had elsewhere, he said the plan he put in place was not to Alpine’s liking.

“I think the senior management at Renault, the CEO, Luca de Meo, wants, as everyone does in Formula 1, success instantly and unfortunately, that’s not how it works in Formula 1,” Szafnauer said.

“So I pointed out to him that it takes time and the process of doing it, what’s required, and having raced for 34 years – and 26 years of it in Formula 1 – I think I speak with a degree of experience when I say ‘this is what it takes to turn a team around’ and they wanted to do it faster than is possible.

“I couldn’t agree to an unrealistic timeline because if you do that, it’s only a matter of time and everyone gets frustrated, so I laid out a very realistic and possible plan and I think they wanted to shortcut that plan with somebody else.”

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