Szafnauer’s truths
Oscar Piastri he is one of the most visible drivers on the starting grid today. Yet, even before his debut in F1, the young Australian was the protagonist of an unprecedented market intrigue: announced as the new Alpine driver for the 2023 season, Piastri himself denied the agreement on social media a few minutes after the official press release of the team, signing a contract with McLaren instead (with whom he still races today). A somewhat grotesque story, which marked the beginning of the end of the mandate of the team principal of the time Otmar Szafanauer. Who, guest of the podcast High Performancebroke the silence by revealing his truths about what happened between Alpine and the Melbourne talent.
The background on Piastri’s farewell
“Oscar Piastri – Szafnauer said during the interview – he was an Alpine Academy rider who had benefited from the team’s support. And there was a contract with him that stated how Alpine had an option on his F1 career after the end of the Formula 2 season. That contract, however, was never signed! And I can prove that I had nothing to do with the failure to sign… That mistake was made in November (2021, ed.) while I started working the following March. So, in November Piastri’s contract had to be signed and it was never done while I, who started a few months later, had no idea what had happened”.
Szafnauer then explained the reason for the error: “They simply had not submitted the documents to the CRB correctly (the Contract Recognition Board of the FIA, the body with which contracts must be filed to be validated, ed.) and the agreement had never actually been signed. There was a two-week window where it could have been done in November, but it never got done. And then, in the case before the CRB, Alpine lost because the contracts had not been filed”.
Power struggles in Alpine
The manager, who before Alpine had been head of Force India, Racing Point and Aston Martin, then revealed further background on what happened subsequently at a communication level: “After we lost the case with the CRB, the team published a statement attaching my photograph. But, first of all, I had nothing to do with that situation, I wasn’t even there. And, secondly, the communications department, which did not depend on me, thought it best to place the blame on me to hide the incompetence of those who were on the team at the time”.
“I know Lucy Genon well – Szafnauer then added – who is the person who put the photo in the press release, since he already worked for me at Force India. I went to her and asked her why they put my photo up and she said ‘I’m sorry, but I was told to do this‘. It wasn’t nice, but I understood that within Alpine there were people I couldn’t trust and who wanted to get me out”.
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