Former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer has accused Renault’s ownership of focusing on the longevity of their careers rather than success in Formula 1.
Speaking on Jake Humphrey’s High Performance Podcast, Szafnauer spoke about his year and a half as Alpine’s team principal, opening up about his sacking during the Belgian Grand Prix and how the team failed to maintain control of Oscar Piastri, who then moved on to defend the colors of McLaren.
Szafnauer explained that before he took charge of Alpine at the start of 2022, taking over from Marcin Budkowski, he had been assured that he would have control over all departments of the F1 team.
“There are some things that went wrong at Alpine. One of them was that I didn’t have control over the entire team: human resources didn’t report to me, but to France. The finance department didn’t report to me. L The communications office didn’t report to me and the marketing and sales group didn’t report to me.”
“And I already knew it was going to be problematic. Before I took the job, it was said that everyone reported to me. I get there and that’s not the case. I thought I could handle it, but I quickly realized it was problematic.”
Otmar Szafnauer, Team Principal, Alpine F1 Team
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Szafnauer explained that the matter came to light when the team lost its F1 Contract Recognitions Board appeal against McLaren over Piastri, as it emerged the 2021 F2 champion did not have a valid contract with Alpine.
Explaining that the crux of the matter occurred in November 2021, months before he joined the team, although Szafnauer said he was framed as a scapegoat for the loss of Piastri.
“The contract was never signed. I started in March. I had no idea. They didn’t submit the paperwork to the CRB properly and they never signed a contract. In November there was a two-week window in which they would could have done, but it didn’t happen that way.
“We put out a press release with my picture. And it had nothing to do with me, I wasn’t even there! The communications department, which didn’t depend on me, thought it was a good idea to deflect the incompetence of those who were helping at the time by putting my photo in the press release.”
“The person who put the photo up worked for me at Force India, so I went to her and said, ‘You know that’s not the case.’ And she said, ‘I’m sorry, I was told to do that. ‘But at that moment it showed that within the Alpine organization there were unreliable people who wanted to take me out.”
“They weren’t working with me. And when you don’t care about the team’s performance, but your power base more than the team’s performance, that’s when you do these types of things.”
“At Ford, and we hope this is no longer the case, there was a saying that ‘The Ford Motor Company didn’t make cars. It created careers,’ which means you care more about your career.”
“And this is not the case with Formula 1, but it can be if a group of people coming from, for example, the Renault Group are put in charge of a Formula 1 team. You don’t worry about performance on the track, but about your own career. And if that’s the case, these types of decisions are made.”
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