The bigger play behind Alpine’s ‘amateurish’ F1 criticisms

Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi’s remarkable criticisms of the performance of his own Formula 1 team caused a bit of a stir in the Miami paddock last weekend. Having summoned French TV channel Canal+ ahead of qualifying for an interview outside the French manufacturer’s hospitality unit in the middle of the Hard Rock Stadium, Rossi did not hold back with his assessment of the job being done.

"It's disappointing, it's actually bad,” he reflected, as he also labelled some of the squad’s efforts this year as showing “amateurishness.”

Rossi’s remarks were clearly not a case of having been caught off guard at the wrong moment and saying things he didn’t want out there. A day later, rather than rowing back on what he had said and claiming that things had been taken out of context, he doubled down in an interview with the official F1 website.

“We have made a lot of mistakes, too many mistakes, over the weekend,” he said. “When you compound that relatively lower performance and lack of operational excellence you end up in a difficult position.”

Such outspoken remarks are not the norm in F1, as teams work extra hard to keep an image of unity and keep internal friction behind closed doors. So, when things do go public, it is normally the precursor to actions being taken. We have already seen that this year when AlphaTauri boss Franz Tost publicly slated his own team at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix with an equally dramatic statement.

“The engineers are telling me that we will make some good progress, but I don't trust them anymore,” he said in Jeddah. “I just want to see the lap time, because this is the only thing which counts."

The significance of those comments became clear in Miami because it emerged that action had been taken very swiftly, with the team’s head of aerodynamics, Dickon Balmforth, leaving. In Miami Tost said: “The person I didn't trust anymore is out, as you can imagine. And the others I trust, totally easy. And they do a good job.”

Tost pulled no punches in revealing his lack of trust in the AlphaTauri engineering staff, with swift action following

Photo by: AlphaTauri

Rossi’s harshness to his own team mirrors the approach that Tost took, and therefore it does not take a genius to suggest that jobs could be on the line at Alpine if things do not improve. In his interview with F1, Rossi was quite clear about where he felt the buck stopped: team principal Otmar Szafnauer.

“He is responsible for the performance of the team – that’s his job,” says Rossi. “There is no hiding here.”

He added: “We had a team that performed reasonably well last year, got the fourth position which is the best improvement we had in a long time. It showed a lot of promise.

“It’s more of less the same people so I don’t accept that we are not capable of maintaining that. Yes, it is Otmar and the rest of his team as Otmar alone doesn’t do everything, but the buck stops with Otmar. It’s Otmar’s responsibility, yes.”

The other way that F1 teams have operated in the past is that if they want to get rid of an individual, they big them up in public – hoping that rival teams fall for the bait and take them off their hands

Asked if trust had broken down between himself and Szafnauer, Rossi said: “Trust is something that increases with good results and erodes with bad results. Everyone starts with a capital of trust and then you manage it. There are only so many setbacks you can take in a sport, in a competition world, because basically it shows.

“Everyone can tell whether or not you’re going in the right direction. It directly impacts your capital of trust. I would say Otmar is very capable, but he has a big task on his hands.”

At first glance Rossi’s comments would not make good reading for Szafnauer, who claimed on Sunday night that he hadn’t read the stories despite having seen the headlines. But what’s important to understand, in the context of where it leaves Szafnauer, is that such criticisms are probably a better thing to be on the receiving end right now than a blatant public backing.

The death knell of many a struggling football manager often comes when the club’s board issue a statement declaring their full and total support in them. The other way that F1 teams have operated in the past is that if they want to get rid of an individual, they big them up in public – hoping that rival teams fall for the bait and take them off their hands.

Szafnauer at least didn't face assurances about his future, a sure sign that his position would be under threat

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz / Motorsport Images

So, if Rossi had wanted to shake things up and get rid of Szafnauer immediately, he could have done that without needing to speak the way he did in public. In Szafnauer’s case, the criticisms from Rossi seem much more aimed at being a wake-up call of the need to get things in order.

Szafnauer himself was certainly eager to broadcast the actions that he is taking at Enstone to make sure that the team is making the progress that Rossi wants to see. A new simulator has been commissioned, but will take up to two years to come on tap, and Szafnauer said he was ready to ‘shortcut’ the push to the front by hiring more aerodynamicists.

“Our simulation tools are not the state of the art, our simulator is 15 or maybe even 20-year-old technology,” he said. “Our driver in the loop simulator, it’s an old McLaren one. I think we bought it about 10 or 12 years ago, but McLaren had one 10 years before that. It's the first simulator ever, we have that technology and things have moved on. So, we need to invest.

“We need to invest in our tools and then we also need to invest in some areas of the business that needs some complementary knowhow. And we're doing both those things. It just doesn't happen overnight.

“You order a simulator and two years later, you got it. It just takes that long to make them. The same with people.

“You want to recruit some people that you know will help the team and you go talk to them and it’s: 'I'm on a three-year contract, I'm one year into it, come back in two years.' That's the world of Formula 1 we live in. The engineers that have the biggest effect on performance, they sign long term deals.”

But while the wheels are in motion to make the steps Szafnauer thinks are essential to move Alpine forwards, what is critical now is whether his timeframe of delivering better results are in line with the timeline that Rossi anticipates. That is something that can only play out over many months, but they seem, at least for now, something that Rossi is willing to wait for.

What is clear in the wake of Rossi’s comments is that there is a more immediate pressure on the squad not to repeat the mistakes of recent weeks. The ‘amateurish’ weekends that spiral out of control, like Bahrain and Baku, need to be a thing of the past if Rossi’s words are not to trigger a harder and more immediate response.

Alpine's double points finish in Miami was a welcome result after a trying Baku weekend

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images