Szafnauer’s Commentary on Piastri .’s Revelations

During the weekend at Zandvoort, the Contract Recognition Board confirmed Oscar Piastri’s contract with McLaren. After that, the Australian rider was quite candid about the situation when Alpine knew he had no intention of staying but announced a contract with him after Alonso’s departure. At a press conference on Friday, Alpine F1 boss Otmar Szafnauer spoke about his version of what happened.

Otmar Szafnauer: “I actually told Oskar that he would be driving for our team as soon as he finished his session on the simulator. He smiled and thanked. But at the time, there was no “group of people” around, as he claims. There were three of us – me, him and the simulator engineer.

If you’ve ever seen a simulation, you’d imagine it’s quite a large room, the size of this press room. And there were only three of us in this big room. And I don’t see anything strange here. He smiled and said, “Thank you.”

At the time, we discussed with Oscar the options for his move to Formula 1 in 2023, as our contractual obligations were valid. In November last year, the team agreed the necessary conditions with him, we believe that this guarantees the continuation of the collaboration with Oscar, if we fulfill our obligations.

We did more than we promised, he did 3,500 test kilometers last year in last year’s car, he became our reserve driver and when McLaren and Mercedes asked him to be reserve driver, which they didn’t have, we let him do it. We did our best for him by showing our loyalty.”

Szafnauer joined Alpine in February this year and was not involved in drafting the contract with Piastri, but refused to shift the responsibility onto his teammates…

Otmar Szafnauer: “It all happened in November last year. It would be easy to blame those who are no longer on the team, but that’s not my style. We have to analyze everything and draw conclusions for the future.”