The last few months have represented a period of profound changes at Alpine. The first step was to reorganize the management part, starting with the relocation of Laurent Rossi to special projects, while Philippe Krief, ex Ferrari and ex Alfa Romeo, rose to the top of the French company as CEO.
In July, confirmation also arrived of the promotion of Bruno Famin, head of the Formula 1 Power Unit department, in the role of reference figure for all motorsport activities. The engineer immediately fell into his role, even taking on the management of the team on an interim basis at the time of the farewell of Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane, who thus bid farewell to the team after over twenty years together.
A complex role to which was also added the responsibility of ferrying Alpine through an important period, also being tasked with evaluating the areas in which the French team must make progress to establish itself in the highest area of the ranking. It is no mystery that among the reasons that led to the separation with Szafnauer there were also disagreements on the time needed to bring the transalpine brand to fight together with the other reference teams.
Esteban Ocon, Alpine A523
Photo by: Alpine
The former Team Principal, in fact, was asking the management for time, well aware that he had started a personnel recruitment plan that would materialize in the coming months and years, as well as having made room for important investments to improve the equipment in the factory, focusing for example on a new simulator. Alpine is divided into two factories: a British branch in Enstone, where there is the department that deals with the chassis and the aerodynamic part, and a French division in Viry-Chatillon, where the engineers are responsible for creating the Power Units.
Famin stated that improving communication and cooperation between the two factories is a priority to be addressed in order to take a step forward as a team: “I am still evaluating both factories to understand how to obtain greater performance and I believe that one of the fundamental things both to try to get all the people to work together. I mean both sides, but also within each of them, to extract all the potential that we have. We have a lot of potential, but the difficulty is to get everyone together, everything together to work better , which is what I’m considering now.”
Famin believes that the cultural changes made have already brought benefits to the team’s on-track operations, although, as seen on Sunday in Japan, not everything is always rosy. However, Famin is satisfied with the changes made, pointing out that the team has made important steps in the way it manages strategies, often one of the lacking points of the French team.
Pierre Gasly, Alpine A523, Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL60
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
“At the end of July we made some pretty big changes in the management of the team. This created a new mentality in the team on track. I’m quite happy with what I’ve seen so far, I think we’ve had some very good races in terms of execution since then of the strategy”.
The next step will be to appoint a Team Principal who can permanently take care of the team. For the moment, however, Famin assures that he is in no hurry: “I have no delay, because I don’t want to be under pressure. For the moment I’m evaluating everything. I think the changes I’ve seen so far are pretty good. As for the track, as I said, I’m very happy with the riders, with the work they’re doing.”
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