Alpine team boss, Otmar Szafnauer, has left the building

Upper management at Alpine has been cleaning house as of late, relegating their CEO Laurent Rossi to “special projects” and replacing him with Philippe Krief a few weeks ago, and flat out firing their team principle, Otmar Szafnauer at the Belgian Grand Prix this past weekend. Along with Otmar’s departure, long-time sporting director, Alain Permane, was sent packing as well. Chief Technical Officer, Pat Frye, is also out the door and headed to Williams for the same role. Szafnauer, Permaine and Frye have a combined total of 102 years of F1 racing experience. On his way out, Szafnauer had some choice words for his former team…

“You can’t get nine women pregnant and hope to have a baby in a month.”

Szafnauer was hired by Alpine eighteen months ago on the basis of his commitment to Alpine’s 100-race plan. The idea, supposedly endorsed by former Alpine CEO, Laurent Rossi, and pitched to Otmar by parent company Renault CEO, Luca De Meo, was to get Alpine into winning form in 100 races. That’s equivalent to about four seasons of F1, meaning that the target was the end of 2025. But, Szafnauer was axed only 34 races into the plan. He said that change takes time, and that he had some good people coming over from other teams in 2024 and 2025. Unfortunately, Alpine doesn’t want to wait that long anymore.

From Alpine’s point of view they saw an Aston Martin team, which finished 7th in the Constructors Championship in 2022, start the current 2023 season with a bang, taking podiums early, and currently sitting 3rd in the championship. By contrast, Alpine finished 4th in 2022 and currently sits in 6th. When looking at Aston Martin’s seemingly overnight transformation, Alpine had to reconsider their 100-race plan. Not only was their quest for podiums taking too long, but it looked like they were going backwards.

Earlier in the season, former CEO, Laurent Rossi publicly blamed the lack of performance on everyone but himself, even though it was his blunder in 2022 that saw the ever-talented Fernando Alonso head to Aston Martin for 2023 and current rookie superstar, Oscar Piastri, slip away to McLaren. Rather than go after upper management at the time, Alpine fired Benedicte Mercer, the team’s director of legal affairs. It wasn’t until after this year’s British GP that Rossi’s head went on the chopping block. At that race, Piastri proved that he’s one of the most talented rookies to come along in years. And, adding insult to injury, McLaren had gone from the back of the grid to a podium contender in less than a month. Alpine had to make a move, and Rossi was next on the list.

It’s interesting that a week before the move to replace Rossi, Bruno Famin, head of Renault’s power unit division, was promoted to Vice President at Alpine, even though lack of power is one of the problems with Alpine’s car this year. As VP, Famin took part in the discussions to replace Rossi. Even more interesting is that Famin was also part of discussions to replace Szafnauer, and he, Famin, will be replacing him as team principle for the foreseeable future. It’s downright Machiavellian.

Now that the die is cast, Alpine will have their work cut out for them. The hubris of upper management may have turned their four year 100-race plan into a six year 150-race plan. Sadly, for Alpine’s drivers, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, they may be old men before Alpine can turn things around.