‘Something amiss’ at Aston Martin as Alpine miss out on huge signing, claims ex-boss

Former Aston Martin and Alpine F1 team boss Otmar Szafnauer has reflected on where he sees the operational levels of the two teams at present.

Szafnauer has shared his thoughts on where he sees his two most recent F1 teams as falling short of being able to challenge the leading teams, with Alpine and Aston Martin battling at the head of the midfield.

Otmar Szafnauer: Aston Martin’s infrastructure is that of a top team

Having been involved with Aston Martin as team boss through its transition from an under-resourced Force India outfit, Szafnauer believes all the ingredients are now in place to allow the Silverstone-based squad to make the step up and challenge the established big teams: Red Bull , McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari.

Appearing on the James Allen on F1 podcast , Szafnauer was asked for his thoughts on how he sees Aston Martin performing – Szafnauer left Aston Martin in early 2022 to switch to Alpine as the Enstone squad’s team boss.

“Lawrence [Stroll] has put in place the infrastructure required for it to be a top team,” Szafnauer said of Aston Martin.

“They’ve hired, and I was part of it, a bunch of good people there. They have two good drivers, and I’ve worked with both of them – Lance [Stroll] and Fernando [Alonso].

“For whatever reason – I’m not that close to it – my expectation was that their on-track performance would have been a little bit better than it is now. I think they were maybe the sixth or seventh-fastest team at Silverstone.

“My anticipation was that they would be fighting for the top three, or definitely the top four. So there’s something amiss there or adrift. I don’t know what that is, you’ve got to be close to it to understand what it is.”

Szafnauer postulated a few hypotheticals as to what he would be questioning regarding Aston Martin’s direction but admitted he doesn’t have any inside knowledge of the situation under team boss Mike Krack as the team works to close the gap to the leading teams.

“Is it really a great place to work? Are they really collaborating?” Szafnauer questioned.

“Is everyone pulling in the same direction? Do you have somebody in charge that understands the entire car, and is making good trade-off decisions between the trade-offs? Aerodynamics, mechanical, car drivability, drivers – all that kind of stuff.

“I don’t know, I’ve been removed, I know what we did when I was there.”

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Otmar Szafnauer: Why are ‘very senior people’ leaving Alpine?

Moving on to talk about Alpine, the team from which Szafnauer split a year ago as he and Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo no longer agreed on the roadmap of success for the Alpine effort, Szafnauer explained the path that he had set off on before the split.

“Alpine is another reset,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get the opportunity to continue on the road that I was going down. What I was doing there was convincing really good engineers and talent, not at the highest level but at the mid-level where the performance actually comes from, to come to join the team, because of the project that we were working on.”

Szafnauer offered some examples of what he had set in motion during his time at the helm, with these moves ultimately not working out.

“A lot of them… I talked to, from a reputation standpoint, one of the best simulation engineers in the world, he was working at Apple when Apple thought they were going to build a car, and he’s moving back to the UK. We convinced him to come to Alpine, and I hear he’s not going now,” he said.

“One of the best aerodynamic structures guys in the world – I didn’t work with him, but that was his reputation working at Red Bull – I convinced him to come.

“A cost cap architect, which, if you’re good at that, you can unlock between five to 15 million of extra spend. That extra spend at the margin is pure performance. That’s where you’re spending it.

“He was at one of the competitive teams and after lunches, dinners, and coffee mornings with him, I got him to decide to join the team. But then I was overridden by the CFO of the Renault Group when they got involved.

“So all those people, apart from one, have now changed their minds. And a lot of the good people that they had there have also left. So it’s a bit of a reset.

“Those resets take time to even get back to where you were before. Pat Fry was one of the first to leave, and then Matt Harmon and Dirk de Beer. Head of vehicle dynamics left, head of aero left… there’s so many of them.

“I just heard two days ago that the head of composite design has resigned, and the chief strategist has resigned. So very senior people are leaving. And you’ve got to ask yourself why.

“It’s generally the team atmosphere, the culture, whatever it is, they don’t like. In Formula 1, the higher the skill level that you have, the easier it is for you to find another job.

“I always say the best guys leave first. So you’ve got to make sure that the team that they’re working for, and the team that you’re leading, is the best place for them so they don’t want to leave.”

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