Yesterday the Renault group announced that Laurent Rossi will no longer be CEO of Alpine and that his role will be covered by Philippe Krief – still Vice President of Engineering and Product Performance of the team, until he gets replaced.
Rossi will now focus on some “special projects”, as Alpine announced, related to the transformation plans of the French team.
Luca de Meo, Renault Group CEO, commented on his departure:
“I would like to thank Laurent for his unwavering commitment over the last two years at the helm of Alpine. Laurent has set out a clear and ambitious strategy for the brand.
“He has put Alpine in the best possible position to achieve its long-term goals. Alpine is now ready to enter a new phase of its development and to become a brand of the future.” he said.
Then he spoke about his substitute, Philippe Krief:
“Philippe combines a long industry experience, great technical knowledge with the leadership qualities that are key to the success of our project, including the launch of the brand’s new vehicles starting next year. I fully trust Philippe and his team to take Alpine to new heights.”
Krief is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées, and has built a long career in motorsport. He worked for Michelin and then for Fiat, then he moved to Ferrari and after that continued with Maserati. He was Technical Director of the Alfa Romeo brand and in 2016 he returned to Ferrari, where he remained until last year, before joining the French team.
Alpine has been anticipating a change for some time, and now under Rossi the team is experiencing a reinforcement of the governance and at the same time the simplification of the main roles, with Bruno Famin being now the main figure to whom all the leaders of Alpine motorsport have to report.
Earlier this year Rossi in an interview for formula1.com had addressed the fault of the poor performance Alpine were showing, by defining it “unacceptable” and “amateurish”.
“It starts with owning up to your mistakes, to not repeat the mistakes, to learn from your mistakes,” Rossi said back ten.
“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.
“We had a team that performed reasonably well last year, got the fourth position which is the best improvement we had in a long time. It showed a lot of promise. It’s more of less the same people so I don’t accept that we are not capable of maintaining that,” he underlined.
“If they fail by giving 500 per cent best and turning this ship around, there will be extenuating circumstances and it bodes well for the future. If not, it’s the rule of business, there’s going to be consequences. And I won’t wait until the end of the year,” he had anticipated.
