Rossi: Piastri story sets dangerous precedent

Laurent Rossi, CEO of Renault’s sports arm, Alpine, hinted that one of the consequences of Oscar Piastri’s bad story could be the closure of the factory’s youth program.

Piastri, who is Alpine F1’s reserve driver this season, has joined the Renault Sport Academy in 2020. He was part of this program when he won his Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles, and it was believed that the fast Australian would drive in F1 for the French concern’s team in the future.

In the end, however, he chose to move to McLaren and in his debut season in the World Championship he will team-mate with Lando Norris. A conflict situation arose, which was only resolved after the intervention of the FIA ​​Contract Recognition Board (CRB) and we have discussed this in sufficient detail.

Alpine’s official partnership with Piastri will last until the end of the year and the team is still recruiting him to work on the simulator, but obviously management is very outraged at what has happened

Laurent Rossi believes this is detrimental to Formula 1 as a whole: “There is nothing good here for our sport and most people in the paddock share this view. Not only is it a bit of an annoyance for us at Alpine, but I think the whole sport is offended.”

The young driver support program was revived at Renault in 2016, although so far none of the entrants have made it to the works Formula 1 team. Of all the Renault Sport Academy graduates, only Guanyu Zhou is now in the championship, but he drives for Alfa Romeo. Although there were quite a few riders who went through this important school at different times.

“It’s part of our history, the history of motorsport as a whole,” said Rossi. – In general, such support programs are mainly made by car manufacturers. But what has happened is likely to set a dangerous precedent and we will have to change something.

It is also a matter of values. We believe that by dealing with young talent, we instill our values ​​in them so that when they reach the peak of their development, they will fit into our company. We have to be happy with their worldview, they have to share our values.”

As there were no vacancies on the factory team, Alpine planned to “fix” Piastri to Williams to gain experience there, then take Fernando Alonso’s place when the Spaniard retired. However, events unfolded according to a different scenario, as the two-time world champion suddenly decided to move to Aston Martin F1 – then Alpine recalled Piastri, but by then his management had already agreed everything with McLaren.

This story has become something of an example for other teams, and there are already suggestions that they can now also change their approach to the selection of young talents, at least they will be more careful about contracting with promising riders who will be supported. Toto Wolff in particular has already spoken about this, who made it clear that from now on Mercedes will formulate more precisely the provisions of the agreements with the participants in their youth program.

However, not everyone agrees with Laurent Rossi that many in the paddock share his view. Here are the words of just one of those who commented on his statement on The Race’s website: “This is all nonsense, especially after the CRB decision. Rossi’s statement is just a whim, since it can’t be verified anyway.

Formula 1 is a brutal sport and I’m pretty sure all teams recognize the importance of contracts, but no one will support Alpine after their clowning around.