Matt Harman is the one Alpine needs right now

In no sport, and certainly not in Formula 1, can a team go long without a leader, captain, leader – call it what you will. But it was in this situation that Alpine F1 found itself after the Belgian stage of the championship, and actually during the stage.

Laurent Rossi, CEO of Alpine, Otmar Szafnauer, who led the team for only a year and a half, Alan Permain, sports director who spent 34 years with Enstone, one of the most experienced paddock professionals, and Pat Fry, who led the team’s technical service, had to leave their posts to leave.

If the leadership of the Renault group has taken such drastic measures in the middle of the season, it remains to be assumed that it knows better, but it is urgent to form a certain group of specialists who will, at least temporarily, take on managerial positions take oneself.

According to The Race, one of these people was Alpine F1 technical director Matt Harman, although Bruno Famen, Alpine’s vice president, was formally tasked with running the team during this transition period.

But in fact, Harman took over the operational management of all processes at the Enstone base. He is respected and appreciated in the team, and after all the recent sackings, he turned out to be the top manager in the team.

It is still difficult to say how long this crisis period will last, and how long Famen and Harman will have to lead the team. Renault may not yet know the answers to these questions. By the way, Bruno Famin also heads the engine building department in Viry, and this is already a very big burden and responsibility.

On the one hand, Matt Harman is primarily a technical specialist and it is not yet a fact that he is ready to take over the leadership of the entire team, especially now that Alpine, like the rest of Formula 1, is starting to prepare for the transition to the new technical regulations in 2026. However, the team really needs such an authoritative person as he is in this period, when it is necessary to overcome the crisis, gather and set up the team for well-coordinated work for the sake of of a common goal.

And there is no doubt that the team is not having an easy time right now. As The Race writes, “You can probably talk about some of the fears that are overwhelming employees right now, because there’s another change in leadership, another new head of the team coming in who’s going to have his own vision, and we’re going to have this to adjust.

There will also be an element of confusion, simply because no one knows yet who this new leader will be… The influence of all these factors cannot be underestimated.”

But if Matt Harman is really committed to bringing the team together, he will have to put in a lot of effort to avoid “confusion and hesitation” that could begin in the coming weeks and months as this transition period lasts, in which it is necessary to make new plans and set new tasks, both operationally and for the long term.

The difficulty is that the team from Enstone has experienced similar bouts more than once in previous years, and it is not so easy to demand the team to mobilize again. But there is simply no other way out for Alpine and its new management, whatever that may be. In Formula 1, no one ever has time to build up, and those who try to pay for it will inevitably end up with those left behind.