Safnauer: I want to apologize to Fernando…

Otmar Szafnauer, head of Alpine F1, summed up the season and at the same time talked about what he learned by joining this team, but at the same time apologized to Fernando Alonso for the fact that the two-time world champion has been plagued with failures throughout the year due to problems with the reliability of the car.

Otmar Szafnauer: “We finished the season in 4th place in the Constructors’ Championship – it turns out we’ve become “the best of the rest”! This is the goal we set for ourselves at the beginning of the year, but we were only able to achieve it in the last race. I would say that is why it is even more pleasant to realize that the task has been completed.

But over the course of the season we were dogged by serious reliability issues and I can understand Fernando Alonso’s feelings about this. But even if the technology didn’t let us down, if our car wasn’t just more or less fast, it was also reliable – and we consciously relied on creating a more efficient power plant, and also kept upgrading the chassis for as long as possible was – then we still didn’t get above fourth place in the team standings.

Of course I want to apologize to Fernando, because it was he who suffered the most from equipment failures, but in any case we have had a good experience this season. However, if we talk about the team as a whole, it is unlikely that we could have achieved more.

Traditions within a team are always difficult to change, but I think when it was still called Lotus it had its own culture, which changed when the team became a factory Renault team again, which is obviously different from what I was used to to work at Force India and Racing Point.

Someone told me that one of Alpine’s principles is that no one is to blame. When you work in a top team, you have to work together, and the bigger the team, the more important this is. If your team employs more than a thousand people, make sure that the atmosphere is psychologically comfortable.

When I started working at Enstone, they explained to me that the culture of the team is based on the fact that it is not customary here to blame each other. I’ve been trying to understand what that approach is, and now we’re working hard, making significant progress, putting in even more effort, and it’s all fun.

But if the team is not accepted to search for the guilty, this does not mean at all that people are not responsible for their actions. This means that you can take risks and at the same time not be afraid to make a mistake. But if the same mistakes are repeated over and over again, if you lack the competence to handle the assigned task, then the team management needs to take action.

Now Pierre Gasly has come to us and is already testing, he is French, like Esteban Ocon, and he is a fast rider with quite a bit of experience, despite his youth. I would say that both of our riders are distinguished by such a combination of qualities, and this is a very good combination. Both are 26 years old, but they have already completed more than a hundred races.”

Safnauer was also asked what he thinks of Fernando Alonso’s move to Aston Martin, the team he led before Alpine F1.

“We’ll see,” replied the American. – When Fernando puts on a helmet, he has no other desire than to show the best possible results, he still loves what he does, he is a top level racer. I’m sure some of his qualities will be really appreciated in Aston Martin, but I suggest we first see what results he can deliver behind the wheel of their car.

The head of Alpine F1 also spoke about what he was going to do after the end of the season: “First I will spend a week in America – I will just go to Thanksgiving, which I have not been able to do for a long time. time, then I will pick up my son, who is studying at the university, and we will go back to Europe. But I will keep working until Christmas, because I have to build a car for next season.