Why the biggest change Alpine’s chiefs want to see isn’t its engines

If there is one element that a manufacturer Formula 1 team needs to be successful, it is that of focusing on the racing and not getting dragged down by corporate politics.

Multiple works team failures in past decades – from Toyota to Jaguar to BMW – all have varying elements of their operations losing their core focus amid boardroom management interference from above.

Lean, mean, racing machines (think McLaren and Red Bull right now) that live on being quick today, not 100 races in the future, open the door to success. Manufacturer outfits that have achieved world championships, such as Flavio Briatore at Renault, Jean Todt at Ferrari and Toto Wolff at Mercedes, managed to do so by ring-fencing their operations as much as possible from the corporate elements.

Sure, an OEM-backed team can thrive even more with the total support of the big bosses – but that is as far as their influence should go. The second the automotive side gets heavily involved in the day-to-day running of its F1 team, or influencing what needs to be done on track, then it’s game over. Amid the turmoil of Alpine’s past 18 months, it has become pretty clear that it has been suffering because of the blurred line between the road car company and the F1 operation – and the inevitable corporate politicking that comes with it.

Nothing perhaps highlighted that more than former Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi’s famous outburst against his own operation at the 2023 Miami Grand Prix. It was this that probably set in motion the chain of events that has left it with three team bosses in the past 12 months, as it has cycled through Otmar Szafnauer, Bruno Famin and on to Oliver Oakes.

Speaking to now Alpine F1 advisor Briatore and the newly appointed Oakes at the Dutch GP, it is this shaking off of corporate interference and getting back to the spirit that helped ‘Team Enstone’ win titles before as Benetton and Renault that has emerged as one of their key targets. Step-changes like the imminent switch from being a Renault works operation to a Mercedes customer team are just a sideshow element to them, compared to the real revolution they want to see within the walls at Enstone.

New team principal Oliver Oakes and executive advisor Flavio Briatore want to take Alpine back to the top

Photo by: Alpine

For at the end of the day, and as Briatore pointed out several times when we spoke, F1 is a people business. You can have all the brilliant technology you want, but if you don’t have the right chemistry between your staff then it’s finished.

“You need the team spirit again like we have had before, like we had in Benetton, like we had in Renault,” said Briatore. “[It takes] a little bit of time but we need to do it quick. This is the mission we have.”

"To turn around this team, you need the young people, you need the people with a lot of passion for the job" Flavio Briatore on the hire of Oliver Oakes

In Oakes, Briatore has someone who brings with him that very injection of racing mentality that he thinks is needed – and someone who could not be further away from a corporate suit who is more interested in his career than his car. And while Briatore jokes that he only gave Oakes the job because the Briton lives near the factory so has no excuse not to be in every day, the reality is the former world karting champion brings the right mentality, a complementary skill set and an approach that is much-needed.

“Ollie is enthusiastic, young, a lot of power, really,” said Briatore. “He is enthusiastic and ambitious. That's what we need in the team. To turn around this team, you need the young people, you need the people with a lot of passion for the job.”

Oakes has many similarities to title-winning team boss Christian Horner in his circumstances and strengths. Both are former racing drivers who achieved success as team bosses in junior categories. That has given them a deep understanding of what makes racing teams fire on all cylinders – but also an ability to think big too.

Both are straight talkers, and also clearly don’t have much time for playing the corporate game – or letting it infect the wider operation. In Horner’s case, it was the fear of corporate meddling that prompted the collapse of talks between Red Bull and Porsche because of worries of German management getting too involved in the racing operation and slowing down its agility.

Like Horner, Oakes had success in the junior formula as a driver before moving into team management

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Explaining the reasons for why things with Porsche had not worked, Horner said a few years ago: “We are an independent team. That's always the way that we've operated in terms of being flexible and the ability to move quickly and efficiently. And I think that's part of the DNA of what Red Bull is.” Getting an F1 team that moves quickly and efficiently is exactly what Briatore and Oakes wants.

From Oakes’ perspective, one of the big changes that we can expect is a move away from the kind of big-management targets that have been chained to Enstone in recent years.
Who can forget Rossi’s famous 100-race ambition - that nobody could agree on when it properly started - for Alpine, and the fact that it hung over the team and every decision it made? You won’t find Oakes making any bold promises about road maps and long-term ambitions.

“It drives me a bit crazy today in F1 that everyone does long speeches, talking about X number of races,” he said at Zandvoort. “It gets a bit painful to keep reading that. At the end of the day, we just have to build a good car and a good team, and I think at the end of that, the results will speak for themselves.”

Earlier this year, Alpine’s former team boss Szafnauer offered a fascinating insight into why he felt that Alpine/Renault had not delivered in F1.

“I think the best thing, and not just Renault but for big car companies to do - and I've seen it a lot, even with car companies that have racing as part of their DNA: they shouldn't meddle,” he explained. Leave it! It's so much different from a car company, you should just leave it to the experts.”

From Briatore and Oakes’s perspective, those experts are already there at Enstone – they have just been worn down by the events of recent years. For Briatore and Oakes, the push now is to bring back the priceless spirit of unity that it has had in the past.

“The spirit when you are winning is different from the spirit when you're not winning, no?” added Briatore. “You feel it from the guy in the parking lot, from the cleaners. When the team is winning, everybody is part of the winning, including the woman cleaning the toilets – me and Ollie. Everybody. So, our job, our duty, is make sure we come back like before.”

Alpine faces an uphill struggle to move up the F1 grid

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images