On Friday, after the first free session in Spa, Alpine's garage was the scene of an unusual meeting where its engineers and mechanics officially learned what they had already known days before.. The team had decided to abruptly fire Otmar Szafnauer, main team and Alan Permane, technical director, while Pat Fry, technical manager, confirmed his signing for Williams. Exactly one year after letting Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri escape, the Alpine structure was bursting into a thousand pieces.
There is no precedent in recent F1 history to match this chaos.. While Red Bull or Mercedes have spent more than a decade with the same man at the head of the organization chart, Alpine has already added four since the beginning of 2021. The last one will be Bruno Famin, who from this weekend assumes maximum responsibility, although on an interim basis. In fact, after the aforementioned meeting in the garage, called urgently due to a leak to the press, Famin rushed to the FIA press conference to offer explanations.. Sitting to his left, Mike Krack, Aston Martin's main team, chose to laugh it off: “We don't have that many changes.”
Just 12 months ago, with Alonso still leading, Alpine was in fourth place in the World Championship, with 96 points over Williams.. Today, the French team has dropped to sixth place, with only 36 points ahead of the British. And even worse than the numbers is the damage to reputation for a team so often hit by haste. Since the Asturian slammed the door, which took place on July 31 at the Hungaroring, Alpine has not been able to raise his head.
Otmar Szafnauer before the sprint race in Spa. AFP
The figures of Szafnauer and Laurent Rossi, former leader of the project fired just over a week ago, have been especially noted. Both decided to release Piastri after a confusing episode where the Australian came to deny an official statement from the team. And both also renounced the leadership of Alonso, considering that the two-time champion was too veteran to lead a medium-term project. Piastri spoke of “lack of clarity” and “breakdown of trust”, while the man from Oviedo, this Monday, sent another depth charge: “It was not a choice to sign with Aston Martin, because in reality there was no offer from Alpine. If at the beginning of 2022 I had had an offer from them, I would surely have accepted it.”
In the light of these statements, what happened a year ago in Budapest is better understood.. On a July 29 like yesterday, Alpine wanted to organize a birthday for Alonso, but the celebrations in the hospitality, reduced to the delivery of a cake in front of a soft drink machine, epitomized the icy relationship between the parties. Alonso had definitely lost faith in Rossi, a guy with a reputation for arrogance who had just ousted Marcin Budkowski as CEO and Remi Taffin in the Viry-Chatillon engine division.
An 'arrogant' leader
Rossi, a successful executive at Google and with a Master's degree from Harvard, had come to the position despite his total lack of experience in motorsport.. He always believed that he could run operations from his own office, which soon earned him the enmity of Alain Prost.. “Rossi was the best example of an incapable leader who believes that he can overcome his incompetence with arrogance and lack of humanity,” the four-time world champion wrote this Saturday in L'Equipe.. A furious setback against whom, at the beginning of 2022, had removed him from his position as ambassador. “He thought he had understood everything from the beginning when in fact he was completely at a loss,” added Le Professeur.
However, the great collateral victim of this crisis may be Permane, a living legend at the Enstone factory, where he has been working tirelessly for the last 34 seasons.. His ruddy and affable appearance seemed like one of the few Alpine certainties. Because since Szafnauer landed, in January 2022, the Briton had gotten down to work with Fry, an old acquaintance of the two world titles with Alonso. And their meetings in a discreet corner of the paddock, with a coffee in hand, were the best thermometer of what was happening during the week. Szafnauer, who since his arrival requested 100 races to be at the level of Mercedes and Red Bull, has only been able to complete 34.