Bruno Famin, who has been appointed temporary head of Alpine F1, assures that while Renault has decided to remove Otmar Szafnauer from the position of team leader, it is not at all about the most experienced manager losing confidence.
Also fired was Alan Permane, who had worked for the Enstone team for 34 years and served as sporting director. Safnauer, on the other hand, did not join Alpine F1 until early 2022, but favored gradual and consistent measures to increase the team’s competitiveness, while Renault Group head Luca de Meo demanded results as soon as possible.
“No one says that Otmar Szafnauer is not good enough. He and Alan are very experienced professionals,” said Famen. – They were the real asset of the team, we understand this very well, but in circumstances where the level of rivalry is so high and we have to overcome such severe trials, it is necessary to achieve complete unity so that everyone works harmoniously together, and that was no longer the case.
We have never lost faith in them. But if we develop such projects, all top management must be aligned on the same wave. We worked together, but at some point we realized that we disagreed on a number of points.
If there is no complete agreement, then we are quite experienced people and understand that it is pointless to continue cooperation, and now everyone has to choose their own path. We simply chose a different path because there was no unity in our ranks.
Personally, I never said that I lost confidence in Otmar. I know his abilities, his track record and I know Alan – both are great professionals. But we were going to stand in one formation, but that was not the case. The results of the team did not meet expectations. Maybe we didn’t manage to add enough, but the opponents did.
We continue to work, but first of all we have to change a lot about the general psychological attitude, but this is one of those tasks that we will carry out during the period of analyzing the state of affairs in the team.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
