Kravitz’s theory on the timing of Alpine departures: “They need to be seen…”
During Friday practice, Alpine announced the departure of Szafnauer, and long-standing sporting director Alan Permane.
Veteran engineer Pat Fry has also joined Williams as their new technical director as part of a sudden exodus at Alpine.
Alpine Vice President of Motorsports Bruno Famin, will assume the role of interim team principal, with ex-Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto already rumoured to be a potential full-time replacement for Szafnauer.
Speaking after qualifying at Spa, Kravitz queried why Alpine didn’t announce the news ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix - or wait until the summer break.
“He [Famin] was appointed above Otmar a few weeks ago,” he said. “Now when that happened we all knew something was up so given that there's been rumours that Otmar’s time as team principal of Alpine was not going to be particularly long, why did they wait until the middle of a grand prix weekend to announce it.
“They obviously parted ways, they did a deal where I assume and we haven’t had this confirmed there was a financial settlement which allowed them to say it was by mutual agreement that their contracts were terminated. So with that all in place, why not announce it on the Wednesday before we got here so it would have been off the story on the Thursday.
“And if you really want to bury bad news, why not wait until Monday which is the beginning of the summer shutdown when everyone in F1 is on their holidays, the media will report it but we won’t be here to interview anyone and point cameras in Bruno Famin’s face, and make them feel uncomfortable.”
Kravitz then put forward a theory on why Alpine timed the announcement for when they did - “to be seen as being decisive”.
“Why not do it on Monday? I don’t get it,” he added. “Unless, they wanted to make the biggest splash possible in showing they’re taking strong action and decisive action in removing elements that are not going to help them get to their goals - that’s the only explanation it could be.
“They need to be seen, Renault, to be taking decisive action - that’s the only logical conclusion as to why they didn’t do the old summer break press release.”
With a sharp eye for F1’s controversies and storylines, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbiased reporting.
