Alpine’s Contract Dispute Settled

With the dust settled and the accusations on the back burner for now, we have to ask ourselves what went wrong between Piastri and Alpine? On August 2nd of 2022 the French team, Alpine, announced that Oscar Piastri would be replacing Fernando Alonso for the 2023 Formula One season. An hour later, Piastri announced that he definitely would not be driving for Alpine. What happened? To answer that question we have to go back to why Alonso left Alpine, which apparently was for some of the same reasons that Piastri chose not to sign with them.

As late as July of 2022, two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso did not have a contract for the 2023 season with Alpine while his teammate, Estebon Ocon, had a deal that would take him all the way through 2024. It wasn’t necessarily a slap in the face, but for someone like Alonso, who lives to compete, it put his future in jeopardy. So when Vettel announced his retirement from Aston Martin on July 28th, Alonso wasted no time finding a team where he could continue on his quest to win races, and Aston Martin wasted no time securing the services of a two-time world champion. The deal was put together over the weekend and announced on August 1st 2022, just before the summer break, leaving Alpine with an open race seat for 2023.

For Alpine, the logical course of action would have been to get a contract signed with one of their junior drivers, maybe even a talented young driver who had been trying to get a race seat at Alpine for eight months. Someone like Oscar Piastri, the only driver to have won the Renault Eurocup, followed by the Formula 3 Championship and then the Formula 2 Championship in back to back seasons. Piastri was already in the Alpine Drivers Academy and was serving as a reserve driver for them in 2022, yet he did not have a future contract in place.

Instead, Alpine was relying on a ‘Terms Sheet’ agreement, which loosely mapped out their plans for Piastri between 2020 and 2023 and did not include a guaranteed race seat at Alpine. The document had originally been sent to Piastri and his manager, former driver Mark Webber, on November 15th 2021. Alpine’s CEO communicated that a proper F1 agreement would be sent over shortly with a view to execute the deal within ten days of receipt, yet it wasn’t until March 2nd of 2022 that Piastri received a ‘Draft Reserve Driver Agreement’ with a note mentioning that a race-seat agreement for 2023 and 2024 was soon to follow. But the race-seat agreement didn’t come until May 19th and more importantly, it proposed that Piastri drive for Williams in 2023 and possibly 2024 without a guaranteed Alpine seat until 2025. A couple of weeks later, on June 4th, Piastri signed a preliminary deal with McLaren. The McLaren deal offered a guaranteed seat for 2023 and 2024. Having become disillusioned with Alpine, Piastri finalized his agreement with McLaren on July 4th, 2022 as one of F1’s brightest new talents.

Apparently, Alpine knew that Oscar had signed with McLaren but it didn’t seem important to them until Alonso announced his move to Aston Martin on August 1st. The following day, Alpine announced that Piastri would be their driver for 2023, prompting the now infamous tweet from Piastri just over an hour later…

“I understand that, without my agreement, Alpine F1 has put out a press release late this afternoon that I am driving for them next year. This is wrong and I have not signed a contract with Alpine for 2023. I will not be driving for Alpine next year.”

Following the tweet, accusations were made about Piastri’s integrity and morals, but after Alpine took matters to the FIA’s Contract Recognition Board the matter was settled. The CRB’s unanimous decision stated that Alpine’s Terms Sheet, which was labeled “Subject to Contract”, was not even close to being valid. Furthermore, as it was Alpine’s decision to take matters to court, they were saddled with their own legal fees as well as Piastri’s, a sum total of over $800,000. At the end of the day though, despite the money they lost, it seems that Alpine got what they might have wanted all along- Pierre Gasly. Gasly was released from Alpha Tauri and signed with Alpine on October 7th 2022, giving the French team an all French driver line up with Gasly joining Esteban Ocon and setting the stage for an epic battle between McLaren and Alpine in the 2023 Formula One World Championship.