Following their third double DNF of the season in Hungary, Alpine were in the headlines during Belgian Grand Prix weekend and it wasn’t for Pierre Gasly’s third in Sprint Race or Esteban Ocon’s points on Sunday. It was the shock announcement on Friday that both Otmar Szafnauer and Alan Permane would part ways with the team ahead of the summer break.
Szafnauer was team principal for the last 18 months, while Permane the incumbent Sporting Director was a stalwart of the Enstone team with 34 years service dating back to the early days of Benetton.
It is a move that follows the removal of Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi in recent weeks, with the Frenchman having been shifted to ‘special projects’ elsewhere. Philippe Krief takes over his role and Bruno Famin, who was promoted to the role of Vice President of Alpine Motorsports, becomes the interim team boss.
Amongst the rapid movements in key roles, Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry was also announced to be leaving the French manufacturer – with the subsequent confirmation at Spa-Francorchamps that he’d be taking up the CTO role at Williams.
These are significant changes for a team currently sitting sixth in the constructor’s championship, with their midfield rivals in McLaren having surpassed them in recent races and almost doubling the points gap between fifth and sixth in the process.
Alpine, a team that in the preseason claimed their objective was to finish closer to the top three than the pack behind.
(Photo by Resul Rehimov/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
What does one unpack from all this though? Alpine have dismally underachieved as a manufacturer team in Formula One – something it has been consistent in doing since returning to the sport in 2016 as the Renault work team.
Each year it has seemed that their management announce a new 100-race or five-year plan to success, with the preceding one barely taking breath.
Looking at the results since 2016; the French team have finished fourth in the constructor’s championship three times, with five podiums and a solitary win for Esteban Ocon at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix. Without disrespect to Ocon, his and Alpine’s maiden victory was more circumstantial and at no point in that eight year span have they been close to being a regular front-runner.
Attributed to the underachievement can be the consistent turnover of key personnel, including the drivers. During the Sky Sports F1 broadcast following the news of Szafnauer and Permane’s departures, a damning graphic documented a tumultuous 18 months of changes in the organisation:
That is without winding the clock back further, when the team was still under its Renault guise and the likes of Frederic Vasseur who was recruited from his successful ART junior formulae outfit to spearhead the French marque in 2016, but ended up quitting not even a year into the role after butting heads with managing director Cyril Abiteboul.
In 2021 when Renault decided it didn’t want to continue having its colours lowered and the board elected to rebrand the team Alpine to market the speciality car division, Abiteboul fell on his own sword of overpromising and underachievement – as did president Jérôme Stoll, before being replaced by Rossi.
Remember the hype around Davide Brivio’s appointment as Racing Director in 2021? The highly rated team manager from MotoGP, who oversaw 5 world championships at Yamaha during Valentino Rossi’s prime then taking Suzuki to an unlikely title in 2020 before his switch to Formula One. That was short lived, as he was moved to a secluded Executive Director’s role at Viry-Châtillon.
What this shows is the cesspool of political infighting that is rife amongst the Renault/Alpine management and it isn’t a new problem. A culture of blame and unaccountability, surmised perfectly in Rossi’s public dressing down of Alpine earlier in the season at Miami.
“It starts with owning up to your mistakes, to not repeat the mistakes, to learn from your mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s not okay to make them twice because it means you didn’t learn. This year, there is a lot of excuses, which lead to poor performance and a lack of operational excellence,” Rossi said.
“I need to tackle this; I need the right people to tackle this. I need the team to be aware they need to do that as it’s not up to me – it’s up to them, they have to do it. It’s their responsibility. I hope they make the same diagnosis. I will make it clear to them that this is the diagnosis, and they need to fix that.”
It’s no wonder the legendary Alain Prost; four-time world champion, who was in an advisory role like that of his former McLaren teammate in the late great Niki Lauda, remarked to French publication L’Équipe that the passive-aggressive Rossi was an ‘incapable leader’.
“He is the most beautiful example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, that of an incapable leader who thinks he can overcome his incompetence by his arrogance and lack of humanity towards his troops,” said Prost.
An arrogance too shown again publicly in 2022 during the Oscar Piastri contract saga, when Szafnauer accused the young Australian of a lack of integrity, despite Piastri not being the one dragging the other party’s name through the mud and having a valid case (as proven legally) that he had no obligation to Alpine.
(Photo by Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Arrogance also, in how they approached re-signing two-time world champion Fernando Alonso beyond 2022, to which only recently the Spaniard admitted to NextGen he ‘didn’t receive any concrete offer from Alpine. Just words.’
Given the stellar form and renaissance of sorts the 42-year old showed earlier in the season with his new team Aston Martin, it shows the hubris of Rossi and Szafnauer to not have offered more respect to one of Enstone’s favourite sons.
Sympathy to Gasly then, despite the Frenchman being a highly rated driver and proven midfield talent with AlphaTauri for whom he won a grand prix at Monza in 2020, that he was Alpine’s third choice as driver for this season.
The likes of Carlos Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo at separate points also bought into the Renault journey earlier on, with Sainz made to feel he wasn’t ‘liked or wanted’, and Ricciardo spectacularly reneging on a whopping US$25 million-a-year salary – believing McLaren would get to the top quicker than the French marque.
From a performance perspective, it seems a bit rich that Alpine have been lobbying support in recent weeks for a U-turn on the engine freeze put into Formula One back in 2021. All for some concession to bring their ‘significantly down’ Renault power-units in line with the other manufacturers. It is not as if Renault joined the championship yesterday, given they along with Mercedes and Ferrari were present on day dot of the turbo-hybrid era in 2014.
It could be argued that Honda, who arrived a year later and painstakingly toiled for the first three years of their return to Formula One with McLaren, then with Red Bull (formerly a Renault customer) have turned into world beaters. So why hasn’t Renault as their own works team?
What next though for Team Enstone, for whom there must be a degree of sympathy, as well as their fans and key stakeholders. Rumours since the British Grand Prix have suggested former Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto could be sounded out to lead Alpine. It was documented that along with Williams’ facility at Grove, Enstone was in dire need for capital expenditure beyond what the cost cap permits to further modernise their base.
That ought to be blamed on the Renault Group’s own arrogance, for promising to beat the likes of Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari – but without the level of investment to back it up. And yes, even though F1 is now under a cost cap, it still means organisations with healthier facilities and non-financial resources are going to do a better job.
A welcome investment from Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney and co of around €200 million saw the star-studded consortium take a 24% stake in the grand prix team. As per Forbes current valuations of all ten teams on the grid, Alpine sits sixth with an estimated worth of US$1.4 billion.
A handy sum if the bigwigs at Boulogne-Billancourt, under the leadership of Luca De Meo decide it’s time to cut their losses and take a back seat as just an engine supplier.
Not a bad idea when an American by the name of Michael Andretti is champing at the bit to find a way into Formula One and can bring serious investment from the likes of General Motors, whose perennial automotive rival Ford will have an F1 presence in 2026 with Red Bull. All things American are in vogue for Formula One.
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