Changes at Alpine: 'We were not on the same line, agreed to split our ways'

Alpine made a sudden change. It was announced in a press release even before the summer break has started: Otmar Szafnauer and Alan Permane will leave the team once the weekend is over. Bruno Famin for now has been appointed as an interim Team Principal at the French team.

"At Alpine, we have a fascinating project, Alpine as a brand, and two weeks ago, we launched the phase two of that project with a very ambitious plan for new road cars, for expansion and so on," Famin began.

He also gave an explanation to what might have been the cause of the sudden change. "After the phase two of the brand, we are going to the phase two of the Formula One project. We have ambition as well, and we have decided to make some changes in order to go faster in reaching the level of performance we are aiming for."

'Not on the same line'

While Famin wanted to thank both Szafnauer and Permane, he said they had different ideas in getting the up to speed on the grid. "We really thank them for always what they brought to the team for a very long time, for Alan, 34 years in Enstone. More recently with Otmar, he secured the fourth place in the championship last year, which was a good achievement but we were not on the same line, on the timeline, to recover the level or to reach the level of performance we were aiming for. Mutually, we agreed to split our ways and that's it."

"The season so far, the results do not match our expectations clearly. We were fourth last year. We know that the top three is very strong, but we were aiming to keep that fourth place and maybe to fight a little bit more for the third," Famin added.

New assessments

Famin has been recently promoted to be the Vice President of Motorsports at Alpine, and now also has to reassess the situation at the French team. "Of course, we have been discussing the topic with the top management for weeks. Now, I will really assess with the whole team what is the real situation and what will be the plan. I will take the necessary time to do this assessment and we will decide later on [who will be the next Team Principal]."