The former Alpine Team Principal Otmar Saffron he pointed the finger at the Renault leaders, accusing them of being the real cause of the team's failure.
Szafnauer on a war footing
The second season in Alpine ended earlier than expected for Szafnauer. But his farewell was not the only one. Sports director Alan Permane also had to return home after the Belgian Grand Prix. As a first effect of these changes the team appointed a temporary Team Principal, Bruno Famin, who declared that Szafnauer and Renault had “different times" to return to fighting for victories and championships.
A statement that did not please the former team principal who subsequently criticized the team accusing Renault management of not knowing what it takes to succeed in Formula 1. The team is going through a delicate phase of profound changes. The results of this first part of the season have not lived up to the ambitions of Renault's top management, eager to get back into the fight for the world championship. Not only did this not happen. But Alpine was also vastly overtaken by McLaren. AND while Alpine seeks more answers from the FIA specifications to the decline in performance this season while waiting for the next Team Principal, Szafnauer gives a different version.
Alpine's problems
The biggest problem for Szafnauer, interviewed by SiriusXM, it was that in Renault: “They wanted to do it faster than was possible and I couldn't accept an unrealistic timeline, because if you do it like that it's just a matter of time and everyone gets frustrated, so I laid out a very realistic and possible plan and I think they wanted to shorten the plan with someone else." Furthermore, upon his arrival at Alpine, Szafnauer also found a lower level of skills than he expected. Filling these gaps would have required resources from other teams, which takes even more time.
“There are sectors of the organization where the level of competence is very basic and this is due to the fact that the people who work there are graduates, for example, and have 25 years of experience like in other teams. It was in these sectors that I started recruiting, but the best in Formula 1 usually have long-term contracts, at least three years. I managed to convince quite a few people in areas that we needed to strengthen, but unfortunately some of them were coming in the fall of '23, lmostly in mid '24 and some in 2025, and this is what I tried to explain: 'Look, it's happening, they're coming, but sometimes you take half a step back to take two steps forward'”.
Renault and excessive control
Szafnauer would also have been surprised by the level of control the parent company wanted to have over many areas of the racing team. Something never seen before according to the former team principal. “The parent company wanted to have control over many areas of the racing team, more than I had ever seen before. The sales area, the marketing area, the human resources, the finances, the communications, all these things did not report to me, but to those around me, to someone else in the larger organization, and everyone behaved like if we were the Navy, but we had to be pirates to win. That's not good at all, because if you have to hire someone and you have to sign a contract within a day, because that's what we do in Formula 1, you can't take two weeks."
Source statements: Motorsport.com
