Harmony between factories key to Alpine F1 fortunes - Famin

Famin took over as an interim team principal at the end of July after the departure of Otmar Szafnauer and long-time sporting manager Alan Permane.

Since then, he has been tasked with assessing the key areas that Alpine must improve to speed up its trajectory to the front of the F1 grid after Renault's management became impatient with outgoing Szafnauer's plans.

Alpine's two-country split between its British chassis department in Enstone and its engine division in France's Viry-Chatillon has often been pointed to as a key challenge to overcome in the bid to become a top team.

Speaking in Japan, Famin affirmed that improving communication and cooperation between the two factories is a priority to address.

"I'm still assessing both factories to see how to extract more performance and I think one of the key things is to try and get all the people working together," Famin said when asked by Autosport what the result of his fact-finding mission over the summer has been.

"I mean both sides, but also within each of the sides, to extract all the potential we have.

"We have a lot of potential, but the difficulty is to put everybody together, everything together to create more performance, which is what I'm assessing now."

Famin felt the cultural changes he had made have already benefited the trackside operations of the team, which has managed to wring a string of encouraging results out of the cars run by Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon despite its relative lack of performance compounded by reliability issues.

Bruno Famin, Executive Director - Viry-Chatillon, Alpine F1 Team, in the team principals Press Conference

Photo by: FIA Pool

"We made some quite good, quite big changes at the end of July running the team," he said.

"This created a new mindset on the trackside team.

"I'm quite happy with what I've seen so far, I think we made some quite good races in terms of strategy execution since then."

Famin, who is also Alpine's vice-president of motorsports, added that he is in no rush to appoint a permanent team boss.

When asked if his hunt for a team principal has stalled, he replied: "I have no delay, because I don't want to be under pressure.

"For the time being I'm assessing everything. I think the changes I've seen so far are quite good.

"On the track side, as I said, I'm very happy with the drivers the job they are doing the spirit we have.

"Of course, the main point will be now to really see how we can get the same kind of spirit in the factories.

"And that's really the point I'm focusing on. It's not a question of [a] person, it's a question of having all the people together."