Szafnauer left the team following last month’s Belgian Grand Prix as part of a major change within the Enstone-based team, which also included the departure of longtime sporting director Alan Permane.
The news followed the departure of Alpine chief executive Laurent Rossi, who was moved by Renault chief executive Luca De Meo to a position away from the F1 schedule.
At Spa, interim team principal Bruno Famin said Szafnauer and Renault had “different timelines” with regards to curtailing Alpine’s five-year plan to fight for victories and championships.
Speaking to SiriusXM, Szafnauer said he “couldn’t agree with De Meo on an unrealistic timeline”, saying Renault management didn’t understand what it takes to be successful in F1.
“I think the top management at Renault, CEO Luca De Meo, like everyone in F1, wants immediate success and unfortunately that’s not how it works in F1,” said Szafnauer.
“They wanted to do it as fast as possible and I couldn’t accept an unrealistic timeline, because if you do it like this 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 shorten the plan with someone else”.
Szafnauer pointed to Renault’s lack of patience with its recruitment plans as a symptom of the underlying problems.
He revealed that when he first joined Alpine 18 months ago, he encountered several gaps in the Enstone team’s know-how. However, managing to fill these gaps by attracting personnel from rival teams, who generally have long-term contracts and is subject to gardening periods, takes a long time.
Esteban Ocon, Alpine A523
Photo by: Alpine
According to Szafnauer, Renault’s lack of understanding of this process prevented him from getting the message across to his bosses.
“There are sectors of the organization where the level of expertise is very basic and this is due to the fact that the people who work there are university graduates, for example, and have 25 years of experience like in other teams.”
“It was in these sectors that I started recruiting, but the best in Formula 1 usually have long-term contracts, for at least three years.”
“I was able to get quite a few people in industries that we needed to strengthen, but unfortunately some of them were coming in the fall of ’23, most in the middle of ’24 and some in 2025, and this is what which I tried to explain: ‘Look, it’s happening, they’re coming, but sometimes you take half a step back to take two forward'”.
“And they didn’t understand anything. It was either impatience or it was emotion, but surely there was no understanding and sadly that’s what it takes and that’s what they’ll find.”
Szafnauer added that the interference from Group Renault was “more than I’ve ever seen before”, with various departments reporting not directly to him but to his superiors.
“The parent company wanted to have control over many areas of the racing team, more than I’ve ever seen before,” he explained.
“The commercial area, the marketing area, human resources, finances, communication, all these things didn’t belong to me, but to those around me, to someone else in the larger organization, and everyone behaved like we were the Navy, but we had to be pirates to win.”
“That’s not good at all, because if you have to hire someone and you have to sign a contract 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 engagement has gone somewhere else. You have to be a pirate.”
The full interview with Szafnauer airs on SiriusXM Thursday nights at 6pm on Cars & Culture with Jason Stein, SiriusXM Business Radio channel 132.
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