It was the American’s determination to keep the then Force India team on the grid that saw the team overcome a crisis in the summer of 2018, and saw it reborn under the ownership of Lawrence Stroll under the new Racing Point identity.
Following this event, he oversaw the expansion process and transition to Aston Martin in 2021.
Szafnauer has officially bid farewell to the team he spent so many years with, and is likely to have a new role at Alpine, a team with which he has been associated since the end of last season.
At the time, any possibility of abandoning the project was denied, but on Wednesday it was announced that he had indeed left Silverstone and that a management reorganization was underway.
The circumstances of Szafnauer ‘s departure and the confirmation of his plans for the future will come to light over time. But what has he achieved in his old home and how important has it been to the team’s survival?
From the automotive industry to F1
Szafnauer left the Ford Motor Company to first join F1 in a management role with British American Racing when it was being created in 1998.
It passed to Honda in 2001, a few years before the Japanese manufacturer bought it and renamed it BAR. Following Honda’s surprising withdrawal from F1 at the end of 2008, Szafnauer found himself without a job, and it was then that he had his first contact with Force India.
Midland and Spyker, who had taken on the legacy of the team from Eddie Jordan, had just finished their first year under their new name under the ownership of Vijay Mallya , and were preparing to switch from Ferrari to Mercedes for their second campaign.
However, there was no place for Szafnauer in 2009. The team had a gearbox supply contract with McLaren and as part of the deal Simon Roberts was transferred from the Woking outfit to be Force India’s chief operating officer. .
Roberts did a good job helping to reorganize the team, but he was never going to be with the team long term. When it became clear in late 2009 that he would be returning to McLaren, Szafnauer came onto Mallya ‘s radar as his replacement.
“September came,” Szafnauer explained then. “And they said to me: ‘Simon will probably go back to McLaren and we will have to replace him with someone, and we like your experience. Can you come to Monza and meet Vijay?'”
“So I met Vijay at Monza for the first time. We had a chat. Working so closely at that level, it’s not just experience that counts, but sometimes personality, chemistry etc. Vijay said let’s discuss it. further. We did, and then we shook hands.”
A few weeks later he officially took over as COO, shortly before the Brazilian GP . His task was to have an overview of all areas of the team, which was much smaller than Honda.
“It’s different from where it was before, the size is different,” he said at Interlagos. “The work is the same, you have to go racing, you have to be competitive, you have to design a car and build it, you need a quality control and a marketing group. You have to do all the same tasks, with fewer people.”
“That means the workers have to do more. I think you also get satisfaction when your involvement is bigger. I like that. When we all got together for the announcement of Simon’s termination of service and my arrival, we did it in a conference room. factory”.
“It’s been eight years since I’ve seen something similar, with everyone gathered like this. It was very nice. With that you get to know each person more intimately, which I think is a very important point when building a team.”
“It’s about understanding who everyone is, making sure they’re working together and going in the same direction.”
A team manager in all but name
Szafnauer did not have the title of team manager, which Mallya went with, but he took on many of the day-to-day responsibilities usually associated with the job. He worked alongside the deputy director, Bob Fernley , who was Mallya’s eyes and ears on the wall, and who represented Force India at FIA meetings.
Under the direction of Szafnauer, the team had an important development. He went from ninth in the championship in 2009 to seventh in 2010, and sixth in 2011, before hovering around that position for a few seasons.
In the era of hybrid V6s , thanks to the great performance of the Mercedes power unit, a further improvement occurred. The team achieved fifth place in 2015, and then fourth in the following two seasons. There was a great atmosphere in the team, and everyone enjoyed being part of an organization that didn’t settle for anything.
“My whole management philosophy was to bring good people to a place like Force India, where you don’t have the resources of other teams…” Szafnauer said.
“The way I did it was by creating the best place on the grid to work. I put a lot of effort into making sure I lead with empathy and made everyone feel like their self-esteem was high, and that they had an important role to play. That’s it.” It allowed me to attract very good talent even if we weren’t Red Bull or Mercedes.”
A big problem at Force India
Everything looked good, but there was a catch. The Force India generic name was always a hard sell, and the cars had relatively little sponsorship outside of the marques associated with Mallya and his partner and shareholder, Subrata Roy of the Sahara Group .
In addition, the team’s owner was facing financial problems in his country, mainly as a legacy of the failure of the Kingfisher airline, while Sahara also had legal setbacks. As time went on, funding began to dry up, and every penny spent had to be justified.
Szafnauer had long been juggling a tight budget, doing a lot with a little, and somehow managed cash flow and kept things going. Then, in early 2018 , and with Mallya in deepening legal trouble, a crisis arose. The very future of the team was threatened.
Szafnauer knew there was no way forward with Mallya at the helm: new investors, or owners, had to be found in record time. His only goal was to find a way to keep the team on the grid and the employees on their jobs.
Then, a technical supplier threatened to cause the insolvency of the team due to non-payment of invoices. It could have been game over in the middle of the 2018 season.
The way to avoid this was to put the company in competition for administrators, a process that would allow time for the team to continue operating and, above all, to be in the races. Also, the difficult task of finding a buyer would be left to the administrators, putting Mallya out of business.
“The process was triggered only because we were approaching insolvency, which was going to happen in a few weeks,” Szafnauer explained then. “So everything was closed. The three options were insolvency, administration or sale.”
“The put option, which I know shareholders were working on, was taking too long, and we were going to find ourselves locked into insolvency, so everything would stop.”
The administration process began just before the summer holidays following the contribution of the team’s driver, Sergio Pérez, who was owed a substantial sum of money.
“The administration beats a liquidation order, because all the judges and legal entities want the thing to survive, first and foremost,” Szafnauer said.
“There are some ways to put it into administration, including shareholders doing it voluntarily. But that hadn’t happened. The team can’t put it into administration, a creditor has to. So somebody had to do it.”
“Checo was between a rock and a hard place. He didn’t want to do it, but imagine you’re in his place. If in three weeks you find yourself insolvent, you don’t have a boost and these 400 people are out of a job… Do you really have any other choice?”
There was no guarantee that the team would survive the summer break and make it to the next race at Spa. As captured in a remarkable factory scene in the first season of the Drive to Survive series, Szafnauer kept morale high, promising his visibly concerned staff that there was a future.
“The uncertainty is stressful,” he admitted that week. “If you don’t know what tomorrow holds, you get stressed, and this is uncertain. However, as time goes by, it will be safer and less stressful.”
“The good news is that we are different from other teams that have gone into administration, because we are a valuable group.”
“We are in the sense that we run well on a low budget, with good sponsors, and we make a good amount of money from FOM, all of that makes us different and valuable, and when you are, you have people who come and buy. It’s that simple. That’s why I’m not as worried as if it were Manor or Caterham.”
A complex process with various stakeholders ensued, including Dmitry Mazepin and Uralkali . However, Stroll turned out to be the ultimate buyer, much to the Russian businessman’s frustration.
In an unprecedented deal brokered by administrators, the Canadian and his partners bought the cars and physical assets of the team, but not the team. With time pressing before the next race at Spa, he had to set up a new company to get out of Mallya’s legal quagmire.
No one in distress had been saved in this way before, because the survival of the company that owned the inscription had always been sacred. However, it was all done with the agreement of F1, the FIA and engine partner Mercedes, and a key element was that Stroll would take over the debts of the original Force India company and make sure everyone got paid. .
A point that had yet to be proven
When the team reappeared at the Belgian GP it had a new identity, Racing Point , and started in the world championship with zero points. Nothing had changed, except that Mallya and Fernley had left, and Szafnauer had been named team manager.
That was proof that Stroll highly valued Szafnauer , and had decided he was the right man to lead the team forward. The new position was also a reward for having kept the structure together during those stressful weeks: he had promised his collaborators that there was light at the end of the tunnel, that they should hang on, and they all did.
With the summer meltdown over, Szafnauer’s new role was to lead the team through the rebuilding process as investment from Stroll trickled in.
In essence, the strategy involved rapidly increasing staffing levels and resources, as well as formulating plans to build an entirely new facility alongside old ones that had already become obsolete.
Stroll’s ambition was to create a winning team, and that added a new dimension when he bought Aston Martin and announced he would bring the name to F1, with all the expectations that went with it.
Under Stroll’s stewardship, Szafnauer has been at the center of Aston Martin’s development and rebuilding, drawing on the experience gained from working with Ford and Honda , two large organisations. He was involved in the hiring of managers, including key technical staff, and played a part in getting Sebastian Vettel on board in 2021.
Racing Point won a race in 2020, the team’s first success since the Jordan days. However, this year, like Aston Martin, it took a step back in terms of performance, largely because the FIA-mandated aerodynamic changes for 2021 affected its car more than those of its rivals.
It’s clear there was pressure on Szafnauer as crew chief , and Vettel’s exclusion of a valuable second place finish in Hungary didn’t help. The goal behind the season was to prepare for the new 2022 technical regulations, which would represent a new beginning.
Late in the term came the startling news that Stroll had hired former McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh as group general manager of Aston Martin Performance Technologies. At first it was indicated that the newcomer would have an overview of the entire business, and that he would not direct the F1 team directly.
However, it was not unreasonable to assume that Szafnauer’s position was compromised, although he himself insisted that Whitmarsh’s experience was an asset to the organization.
“He’s still coming along, if you will, and learning who we are,” said Szafnauer after Whitmarsh’s appearance at the United States GP.
“We’re 600 people now. And he’s spent a lot of time in the last few weeks getting to know all the members of the leadership team, having long meetings with them, and he’s there to help us. Strategically, we’ve got a lot to do, including building a campus, hiring people, putting in place processes that maybe a small team wouldn’t have needed, but a big team will. And he comes from a big team.”
“When I was at McLaren, it was one of the strong ones. There are things that as a small team we didn’t have in place, and we have to quickly put that in place as we grow. So there’s a lot to do.”
A few months after this news, Aston Martin confirmed that Szafnauer will not be part of the future after all the years he worked. The only question that remains to be resolved is whether his next goal will be to make Alpine a champion team.
What’s next?
It remains to be seen to what extent the team was prepared for his departure and how much he will be missed after having played such an important role on a day-to-day basis for more than 12 years.
He is still being linked with a future role at Alpine, but wherever he lands he can call on the management skills he outlined the week he joined Force India in 2009.
“My philosophy is that before you make any changes, you have to understand what you have, otherwise you’re lost,” he told me.
“My next steps in the short term are to understand in depth how the team works, perhaps what areas could use more resources, always aiming to improve performance. I need to understand things first before I can really answer that question.”
“There have been a lot of people in the industry who come in as a new team manager and make changes because they think it’s the right thing to do.
“I’ve seen it in F1 teams, where a big company that may be the parent puts in a new management team, and to show the parent that they’re doing something, they change everything. Sometimes that works, but for me it’s like closing eyes and throw a dart.
“Sometimes he hits the target, but not always. You have to see where he is before you shoot. For me that’s the right thing to do.”
