Interim Alpine Team Principal Bruno Famin has provided further details regarding the shocking start of the second phase of Alpine’s race team development that has seen the exit of senior team figures.
The Alpine Formula 1 team has experienced a rocky first half of 2023. This comes after the Enstone team had a comfortable point advantage against McLaren’s midfield rivals that dwindled to a 46-point deficit by the summer break.
Alpine is currently in P6 in the constructors’ championship while its drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon are now ranked P12 and P10 in the driver standings, respectively.
Alpine’s parent company, Renault, implemented significant changes in response to the team performance slump. Following the Belgian Grand Prix, Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer resigned from the team’s leadership as Alan Permane, who served as Alpine’s sporting director for 34 years, also left the squad.
A difficult couple of weeks for the Alpine team were made even worse by Pat Fry’s departure to join Williams as Chief Technical Officer.
The recent team departures were believed to be due to a disagreement over team development “timelines”, according to interim Team Principal Bruno Famin. He also assured “Phase 2” of Alpine’s long-term project is currently its main focus.
“At Alpine you know we have a fantastic project, brand project, to develop the brand, with new products. It’s very ambitious,” Famin said. “And it’s super fascinating for me, who is a motorsport guy, because the global strategy of Alpine is also based on motorsport programmes and mainly Formula 1, which is the main program.
“Two weeks ago, the top management decided to go to phase two of the brand project with some changes.
“Not to change the view, but to reinforce the project and to go faster deploying the brand.
“And then it was logical on the Formula 1 side where midseason it is clear that we are not where we expected to be.
“We also push forward in order to go faster and to have more possibilities, more chance to reach our goals.”
Famin added that his excitement over his new position is primarily driven by the “project”.
“It’s not the role of Team Principal, what is super interesting is the project itself,” he added. “The project of the brand and making a team which is good even better and even better to fight for the win.”
Famin was adamant in his statement when asked if Alpine’s development for 2023 will be impacted by the team changes.
“There will be no impact at all,” he insisted. “I think all the people in Enstone and in Viry know perfectly what they have to do.
“They are focused on improving the car at the level. We keep working on that, there will be no impact.”
Ocon’s P3 at Monaco is the team’s best finish of the year so far despite struggling to maintain consistency throughout the course of the season. This outcome followed a disappointing weekend in Baku that included numerous power unit failures and crashes.
