First contract termination at Alpine over Piastri case

Alpine have fired their head of legal affairs as a direct result of the situation with Oscar Piastri last summer. This reports Soymotor.com. In her position, Benedicte Mercer was directly involved in the contracts of drivers within Alpine, which included Piastri.

The soap opera surrounding Piastri started Formula 1's so-called 'silly season' this year. Following the announcement that Sebastian Vettel was retiring and would be replaced at Aston Martin by Fernando Alonso, Alpine did not hesitate for a moment to confirm Piastri as Alonso's replacement. However, Piastri had other ideas about that: he immediately posted on Twitter that he had no plans at all to drive for Alpine. Not much later, it emerged that he already had a contract ready at McLaren. In the end, an FIA arbitration had to decide which team Piastri will drive for next season. That fell in McLaren's favour.

Alpine holds Mercer responsible

That Alpine had made a mess of things should be obvious. Within a team, there should be no doubt about the validity of drivers' contracts and it should not happen that a driver and a team have completely different readings on the content of a contract. It is therefore not surprising that someone from the legal department is being held responsible. The team itself now acknowledges this and says it is taking steps to avoid situations like this in the future. Part of that, then, is the dismissal of Mercer.

Mercer was hired as head of legal affairs in late 2011. Since then, she has held that position at the team which was successively called Lotus, Renault, and Alpine. Because Alpine is officially registered in England, they must also abide by UK laws, including the obligation to report changes in management to Companies House. Those records show that Mercer was sacked on 8 November 2022.