Alpine’s Fallen Leader: Otmar Szafnauer Blames Senior Management for Oscar Piastri Fiasco

Former Alpine F1 leader attributes loss of Oscar Piastri to "dishonest" leadership

Otmar Szafnauer shares insights on Oscar Piastri's move to McLaren.

Former Alpine F1 leader Otmar Szafnauer attributes the loss of Oscar Piastri to McLaren entirely to the senior management's mistakes.

In mid-2022, Piastri was revealed to be joining the Alpine racing team.

Nonetheless, soon after the team made the announcement, Piastri took to Twitter to definitively state that he would not be taking the wheel for Alpine in 2023.

One month after, upon a review by the Contract Recognition Board to examine the situation, McLaren received approval to reveal Piastri.

This implied that within a span of weeks, Alpine found itself without both Piastri and Fernando Alonso.

During an appearance on the High Performance podcast, Szafnauer, who then served as the team principal for Alpine F1, revealed insights into the circumstances.

"He explained that once Oscar Piastri concluded his F2 career, there existed an agreement that gave Alpine the right to choose Piastri as a Formula 1 driver for their team. However, this agreement was never put into effect."

"In November, a fortnight period presented an opportunity for action, which ultimately went unseized."

"My argument centers around the CRB issue where Alpine faced a setback due to mishandled paperwork. Following this, we issued a press statement accompanied by a photo of me. Firstly, I had no involvement in this matter. I was not present at all.

"Secondly, the communications team, which was not under my supervision, believed that a suitable strategy to distract from the shortcomings of the individuals at Alpine at that moment was to feature my photograph in the announcement."

Szafnauer firmly believes that the entire debacle highlighted the "unreliability" of Alpine's senior leadership and that certain individuals in the organization were "targeting me".

"However, it revealed that during that period, certain individuals in the Alpine organization couldn't be trusted and were actually against me; they weren't cooperating with me," he further explained.

"Despite the delay in finalizing the agreement, the contents of the contract we handed over to Oscar were far from trivial. It involved 5000 kilometers in a car that was two years old, an endeavor that was quite costly for you – yet, we accomplished it."

"We unequivocally fulfilled all obligations outlined in the contract, despite it not being formally signed. Under English law, had we pursued the matter in an English court, it's possible we might have emerged victorious.

"It's essentially gaining unfairly. 'Look, there was no formal agreement on your part, yet you accepted everything and now you're failing to fulfill your obligations."

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