Former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer discusses the team’s difficult 2024 season as he reflects on his ambitions during his time with the French marque.
Alpine have suffered a trying 2024 Formula 1 season thus far, with the French squad currently 9th in the constructors championship. This comes following a year of major upheaval within the team last season, with key players being replaced.
Former team principal Otmar Szafnauer, speaking with the High Performance podcast, discussed his stint at the team, which he says he had plans to make “into a top three team.”
“I couldn’t have predicted the future,” He explained when speaking on the High Performance podcast. “I had a contract, I wanted to do the best I can for my team, I’m still working hard, I’m still delivering relative to today. We were sixth in that championship, but we had a couple of podiums, we were scoring points regularly, it wasn’t a disaster, we were in the midfield.
“It’s not like today, I don’t know where they are today, ninth or something in the championship? Today it’s a disaster. It’s a half step back, but sometimes you take a half step back to take two steps forward. The recruitment was happening, good people were coming, I was going to turn that team into a top three team which is what we wanted to do.”
Szafnauer also discussed the team’s long publicised horsepower deficit, with the Renault power unit reportedly 25 horsepower down on the others within the sport. He explained this was another point of contention which he was fighting to improve at the time.
“I was working with the FIA at the time to work with the power unit equalisation.” He explained. “We were 25 horsepower down on power when the engine freeze happened, there’s a gentleman’s agreement amongst the engine manufacturers that said if somebody is way down on power we’ll allow them to come back up.
“My last meeting, which was a Formula 1 Commission meeting in Belgium … I put a strong case forward for allowing Alpine powertrain to come back up to equal the others. The other three were within a kilowatt of each other. We’re 15 kilowatts down, 25 horsepower down, it’s hard to compete. So I was working on all those fronts to get Alpine better, and I did it to my last day.”
His sudden dismissal from the team, announced during last year’s Belgian Grand Prix, came alongside the departure of Alan Permane – then sporting director, a contributing factor to the team’s losses this year according to Szafnauer.
He explained he had been instructed to make drastic changes to the team which he did not agree would have a positive impact on operations. This, he believes, was a point which led to his dismissal from the team.
“There were suggestions that I needed to change the corporate culture in a way that I didn’t think was the right way to do it.” Szafnauer recalled. “I know how to change corporate culture into a culture that has a winning mentality, psychological safety, everything that I’ve talked about that I was on my way to doing.
“They wanted a corporate culture change in a different manner, to get rid of some people that were doing a good job, that had been there for a long time, and my thought was if you get rid of people that do a good job then the message you send is ‘do a good job, get fired’ and that’s not the culture that you really want.
“I was asked , and I said no. It’s not who I am. That would have been short-term. Those people that have left actually did a good job, most of them are at other teams now, and just look at the results, you can see the difference. It’s not because I left, there was a mass of people that left.”
