Szafnauer: 'Untrustworthy' people at Alpine were out to get me
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Former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer has lifted the lid on his tumultuous tenure at the French F1 team, accusing members of the Renault-owned team of being "untrustworthy" and working against him while prioritizing their own careers over the outfit's success.
Szafnauer, who joined Alpine in early 2022 after serving as team principal at Aston Martin and Force India, revealed that his time at the Enstone squad was marred by a lack of control over key departments and internal power struggles.
According to him, many within the organization were more focused on protecting their positions than on improving the team's on-track performance.
In a candid conversation with Jake Humphrey on the latter's High Performance Podcast, Szafnauer explained that before he accepted the leading role at Alpine, he was assured he would have full control over all departments necessary to run the Formula 1 team.
However, when he joined, he found this was far from the reality.
"There's a few things that went wrong at Alpine," he said. "One of which was I didn't have control over the entire team: HR didn't report to me, it reported up through France.
"The finance office didn't report to me. The communications department didn't report to me and the marketing group and commercial didn't report to me.
"And that in itself, I knew it was going to be problematic. Before I took the job, it was [said] everybody's reporting to me. I get there and that's not the case. I thought I could manage it, but I soon knew that it's problematic."
Szafnauer also quickly realized that Renault's vision in terms of team culture was not aligned with his own.
"There were suggestions that I needed to change the corporate culture in a way that I didn't think was the right way to do it," he explained.
"I know how to change corporate culture into a culture that has a winning mentality and psychological safety which I was on my way of doing.
"They wanted a corporate culture change in a different manner to get rid of some people that were doing a good job that have been there for a long time.
"And my thought was, well, if you get rid of people that do a good job, then the message you send is: do a good job, get fired. That's not the culture that you really want."
Despite his initial belief that he could manage the situation, Szafnauer eventually realized that the fragmented structure would create issues.
The situation came to a head during the high-profile contract dispute involving Alpine junior Oscar Piastri, a saga that ultimately ended in the team losing the Australian talent to McLaren.
The mishandling of Piastri's contract became a significant embarrassment for Alpine in 2022. Despite publicly announcing Piastri as their future driver, it was revealed that the team had failed to secure a valid contract, allowing McLaren to swoop in and sign the rising star.
Szafnauer explained that the contract blunder occurred before he even joined the team, but he was blamed for the failure.
"They didn't submit the CRB [Contract Recognition Board] documents correctly and never signed a contract with him," the American recounted. "In that November, there was a two-week time window where it could have been done, and it wasn't."
While Szafnauer had no involvement in the mishap, he became the face of the scandal, with Alpine's communications department issuing a press release with his image, deflecting responsibility away from those who had been involved.
"We put out a press release, and it has my image on it. And it was nothing to do with me, I wasn't even there!" he said.
Szafnauer suggested that the decision to link his image to the Piastri saga was part of a broader effort by some within the organization to undermine him.
He recounted how the person responsible for the press release had previously worked for him at Force India, and when confronted, she admitted she had been told to do it.
"I went to her and said 'you know better than this'. And she said 'I'm sorry, I was told to do this'" he continued.
"But it just showed at the time that there are some people within the Alpine organisation that were untrustworthy and were out to get me.
"They weren't working with me. And when you don't care about the performance of the team, what you care about is your power base more than the performance of the team, that's when you do those types of things.
"If you get a bunch of people from, say, the Renault Group now being put in charge of a Formula 1 team, you don't care about on-track performance, you care about your career."
Szafnauer's turbulent time at Alpine came to an end when he was dismissed during the Belgian Grand Prix in 2023 along with sporting director Alan Permane.
His departure followed a series of management changes at the French squad, as the team struggled to make significant progress in its bid to challenge the top teams in Formula 1.
Szafnauer's dismissal was simply part of a wider shake-up as Alpine searched for a new direction.
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