At the beginning of 2021 in which the Enstone-based team debuted a new identity, Alpine opted for a different management system from that of the other teams in the top category.
The French did without a team manager and instead a triumvirate was created to run the structure: Laurent Rossi as general manager, Marcin Budkowski as executive director and lastly, Davide Brivio as race director.
However, after seeing the performance of the team that finished fifth in the constructors’ championship last year, Rossi said he was open to changing the management structure for 2022 and beyond if the team wanted to aim for something big.
In short, a year later, of the three men who were in charge of the team, two of them are no longer even within the Formula 1 team.
Budkowski stepped down from his role over the winter, while Brivio has been moved into a new role where he will oversee Alpine’s young drivers, as well as their activities in other motorsport categories.
Alpine now has a team principal, Otmar Szafnauer , who will work alongside former FIA and Peugeot member Bruno Famin to run Renault’s operations at Viry, home of the company’s engine factory. .
While it’s true that the new structure seems to suggest that Alpine’s old plan didn’t work out, Rossi sees things in a very different way.
For starters, he acknowledged that creating a bossless structure for 2021 was something driven by necessity, due to the late departure of previous team principal Cyril Abiteboul .
“I would say it was the best option to structure ourselves that we had at the time, as you can’t replace an experienced team manager like Cyril overnight,” Rossi told media outlets including Motorsport.com. .
“You also can’t build a structure like Alpine ‘s by quickly deciding to hire new people. It takes a little time to find the right people for the right position.”
“The combination of the three last year meant that each one brought their own skills to the table, which also allowed us to never seem lost on track. That’s the most important thing.”
“We completed the season and never made a fool of ourselves, it was good. But now, was it the right structure to move forward and take the team to the next level?
“The team has been stagnating and I think we were on an almost negative slope. Fourth in 2018, fifth in 2019 and 2020. And then last year fifth again, but everyone knows that if Yuki Tsunoda had been at the level of Pierre Gasly, maybe it would have been a different story.”
“I think we were reaching a good level of performance like the best of the rest. But it is not what we need to move on to the next challenges. This is where I decided that, in order to reach that goal, we need to strengthen the team and return to a more structured structure. conventional”.
“This is because Otmar has much more F1 experience than the three of us put together. He has the pedigree, and he has the skills. We now have a team manager and it is him.”
Szafnauer comes to the Alpine team with a huge reputation, having helped (Force India/Racing Point/Aston Martin) to podium finishes and wins in cars that have never been dominant.
Rossi believes the Romanian-American’s engineering experience, as well as his knowledge of working with big manufacturers like Ford and Honda , will be instrumental in helping to bring about a better match between Alpine’s facilities between Enstone and Viry .
“It goes without saying that he is a top-level engineer. We already have top-level engineers on our team, but he is going to bring clear leadership and that ability to build a team.”
“That is precisely what we want from Otmar. He has done it in the past, very brilliantly, especially with limited means at Force India and then at Racing Point. I am sure he will do it again with us.”
Where Rossi believes Alpine has failed is in trying to get the most out of being a factory team and he claimed that the chassis and engine have not been as integrated as necessary. One of the reasons why the team was unable to make the most of all its strengths in recent seasons.
“It was obvious that we needed to bring in someone who could combine or unite the resources of the three key aspects [engine, chassis and track].”
“We needed someone who was able to build that bridge first. Because if you really want to be a factory team, you need Viry and Enstone to be on the same page.”
“Otherwise you’re just a customer team, or even worse, because you’re paying for the engine and development, but you behave like a customer team. So you’re not really a factory team.
In addition to the alliance between Szafnauer and Famin , Alpine has also changed its technical structure: Pat Fry will take over as chief technology officer and Matt Harman , former head of powertrain integration at Mercedes, will take over as technical director.
Rossi added: “Matt brings a lot of experience as a power unit engineer and a great ability to design a car as he was running the design office.
“He has that nice mix of being a versatile generalist in terms of understanding all areas, but also being an expert in the power unit. With that, we are going to strengthen the ability to integrate the power unit into the chassis, which will bring performance in the engine, which is important, and obviously also in the chassis”.
“Those two were clearly the areas that made the difference and the gap to the top teams up to this point. So hopefully we can fix that soon.”
However, in Formula 1 the structures are not judged, but the performance of the car.
After three years in which they have failed to get higher than fifth in the standings, it is clear that Alpine wants and needs to do better. But is Rossi confident the team now has what it takes to take on the might of Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari?
“If I have to be honest, until now we weren’t able to compete with them, because otherwise we would have done it, simple as that,” he said.
“What you see on the track is impossible to deny. But we have already made changes and we will continue to make more changes to the structure, to the way we do things.”
“They are not fundamental changes, it is here or there just learning from the best,” he concluded.
