ALPINE LOOKS TO THE POWER OF THREE
Amid ongoing bouts of reshuffles and redundancies, Team Enstone is once again starting from scratch – now, it seems, from its lowest point in a decade. It ended the first two rounds bottom of the championship standings and clearly has the least competitive car on the grid.
Since buying the team at the end of 2015, Renault has changed course three times. The original plan to return to the top level in five years’ time was abandoned in 2021 and the man who articulated that plan, Cyril Abiteboul, ousted. The project, now under the Alpine banner, was taken over by Laurent Rossi, who appointed Otmar Szafnauer as team principal. Szafnauer was responsible for executing a new plan in which the team would return to the front 100 races after the start of the journey.
Although there was some ambiguity as to what exactly counted as said ‘start’, ultimately this proved inconsequential. Last summer there were more changes: Rossi and Szafnauer were out, as was sporting director Alan Permane, who had been at Enstone for 35 years.
Bruno Famin, who replaced Szafnauer (initially on an interim basis), stated last summer that the upper management wasn’t happy with Otmar’s vision and understanding of the timeline. But the trajectory has been anything but upward since his dismissal.
A new wave of resignations came at the start of the new year. Before the first race in Bahrain, reports emerged that both technical director Matt Harman and head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer were leaving Enstone. In fact, even if both had decided to leave of their own accord, the performance of the 2024 Alpine car could have prompted heads to roll in the technical department anyway.
Now Famin is attempting to create a structure at Enstone similar to the one Andrea Stella has built at Mclaren. At Woking, the position of technical director was abolished at the start of last year, with responsibilities shared between three technical experts: Peter Prodromou (aerodynamics), David Sanchez (car concept and performance) and Neil Houldey (engineering and design).
Alpine’s new structure is led by a triumvirate of technical directors: Joe Burnell is responsible for engineering, David Wheater for aerodynamics and Ciaron Pilbeam for performance. All three report to Famin.
It was also announced that Bob Bell has left his role as an advisor, having agreed to join Aston Martin instead.
Famin insists the team will continue to grow – and the fact Alpine can’t boast of recruiting big-name engineers to replace those who have left doesn’t seem to bother him.
“We will have more people coming soon,” he told
GP Racing’s sister publication Autosport. “Not big, big names, but very interesting profiles. It’s good to have a controlled turnover in our staff, and to reinforce the structure we have with the talented people we have.
“It’s good to be able to attract big names, but we know it takes a lot of time to add them with gardening leave. We do not exclude anything, but for the time being we’re happy with the people we have, the idea of developing the potential of our own people, and to develop creativity, reinforced by newcomers in strategic positions.”