Ousted Alpine F1 boss blames “untrustworthy” management for Oscar Piastri debacle

Ousted Alpine F1 boss Otmar Szafnauer believes the senior management were entirely to blame for losing Oscar Piastri to McLaren.

Piastri was announced as an Alpine driver in the middle of 2022.

However, shortly after the team announced the news, Piastri tweeted on X categorically that he would not be driving for Alpine in 2023.

A month later, following a review by the Contract Recognition Board to discuss the case, McLaren were given the green light to announce Piastri.

This meant that Alpine had lost Piastri and Fernando Alonso in a matter of weeks.

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Szafnauer, who was Alpine F1 team principal at the time, shed light on the situation.

“There was a contract after he finished his F2 career where Alpine had an option on Oscar Piastri as a Formula 1 driver for Alpine, and that contract was never executed,” he explained.

“In November, there was a two-week time window where it could have been done, and it wasn’t.

“Now my point is, come the CRB where Alpine lost because the filings were incorrectly done, we put out a press release, and the press release has my image on it. So number one, nothing to do with me. I wasn’t even there.

“But number two, the communications department that didn’t report to me thought it was a good idea to deflect the incompetency of those that were Alpine at the time by putting my picture on the release.”

Szafnauer is adamant the whole fiasco showed how “untrustworthy” Alpine’s top management were and that some people within the organisation were “out to get me”.

“But it just showed at the time that there were some people within the Alpine organisation that were untrustworthy and that were out to get me, so they weren’t working with me,” he added.

“Although they didn’t sign the contract in time, what was in that contract we delivered to Oscar, and that was not insignificant, it was 5000 kilometres in a two-year-old car that cost you a lot of money – and we did that.

“We absolutely did everything that was meant to be done by that contract that was never signed. In English law, had we taken it to an English court, maybe we would have won.

“You know, that’s unjust enrichment. ‘You know, you didn’t sign the contract, but you took all this and you’re not delivering what you’re supposed to deliver.”