2023 Alpine F1 Team

[-wkst-]

Fair point.

But Alpine F1 team being in Paris would bring a lot more stability to the project by being closer to the Group HQ.

Maybe more stability in overall terms, but have in mind that most of the employees in Enstone are from the UK and won't move to France. They would start almost from zero...

[Stu]

I don’t think that this is too far off; the Alpine brand would be better suited to WEC (they have just launched an LMDh prototype), as well as announcing an H2 racer/road car (again a route being pushed by the ACO), so maybe Enstone will come up for sale…

Did Enstone design the aero kit for the LMDh car or did Oreca design it?

Going the LMH route would have, IMO, better utilised Enstone's capabilities and created budget cap opportunities.

Other than a vague “body work has been designed to carry the brand” there hasn’t been any real indication of where/who has been responsible; we do know that Oreca build the base chassis (and presumably a bodywork kit to match for LMP2), I would be surprised if the Oreca kit and Alpine kit were the same (no images of any current LMP2 ‘base’ kits have been released to my knowledge and the New LMDh chassis will not run in LMP2 until either next year or 2025 (cannot recall which). All new LMDh cars are based on the next-gen LMP2 chassis.

[FW17]

Fair point.

But Alpine F1 team being in Paris would bring a lot more stability to the project by being closer to the Group HQ.

Maybe more stability in overall terms, but have in mind that most of the employees in Enstone are from the UK and won't move to France. They would start almost from zero...

The reason for move to France is Enstone as whole has not worked. Time to try something different. Toyota in all there years in F1 operating from the continent had never been as deplorable as Renault/Alpine has in the last 8 years.

And both had underperforming engines.

[AR3-GP]

Fair point.

But Alpine F1 team being in Paris would bring a lot more stability to the project by being closer to the Group HQ.

Maybe more stability in overall terms, but have in mind that most of the employees in Enstone are from the UK and won't move to France. They would start almost from zero...

The reason for move to France is Enstone as whole has not worked. Time to try something different. Toyota in all there years in F1 operating from the continent had never been as deplorable as Renault/Alpine has in the last 8 years.

And both had underperforming engines.

Enstone won two '05 and '06, and had good cars in 2010-2012. The location is not the problem.

Proposing that Enstone move to france is just so wholly and totally incorrect.

[FW17]

Maybe more stability in overall terms, but have in mind that most of the employees in Enstone are from the UK and won't move to France. They would start almost from zero...

The reason for move to France is Enstone as whole has not worked. Time to try something different. Toyota in all there years in F1 operating from the continent had never been as deplorable as Renault/Alpine has in the last 8 years.

And both had underperforming engines.

Enstone won two '05 and '06, and had good cars in 2010-2012. The location is not the problem.

Proposing that Enstone move to france is just so wholly and totally incorrect.

Viry-Chatillon - 14 wins from 9 seasons
Enstone - 20 wins from 15 seasons

[JordanMugen]

Fair point.

But Alpine F1 team being in Paris would bring a lot more stability to the project by being closer to the Group HQ.

Maybe more stability in overall terms, but have in mind that most of the employees in Enstone are from the UK and won't move to France. They would start almost from zero...

Apparently Permane is toxic and anti-French:

I think that the rising morale of the troops is mainly due to the fact that Permane, Szafnauer, etc. were fired, and frankly, they were useless. I was already with Permane when I was at Renault in 2003, and Renault took him off the race team because they couldn’t stand him on the race team any longer and was toxic, and put him on the test team. When he returned to the test team, he tired everyone out, and he’s been with the team for 34 years. I think it was the right thing to do, bravo Bruno Famin. Because you should also know that Permane can’t stand French drivers.

- Franck Montagny
https://las-motorsport.com/f1/news/toxi ... gny/12302/



Naturally moving to the team to France would solve the problem of all these dreadful English employees.

Enstone won two '05 and '06, and had good cars in 2010-2012. The location is not the problem.

Would it not reduce factional tensions (the narrative from the likes of Montagny) and scrutiny on partially publicly-owned Groupe Renault spending if (what is after all) the French national Formula One team was actually based in France?

Permane had been critical of the French drivers on the team and had claimed that if the team had a better engine and different drivers (a better result would have been achieved at Monaco).

https://las-motorsport.com/f1/news/toxi ... gny/12302/



Surely having the skilled experts at Viry handling the entire operation is better than having the "useless" (Montagny) "amateurs" (Rossi) at Enstone do a poor job on the chassis whilst crudely blaming Viry for delivering a subpar power unit.

Yes, having the operation in Enstone worked well in 2005-2006. But with Alpine increasingly being positioned as the French national Formula One team, surely having such a large part of the operation abroad in England creates the potential for too many factional rivalries and much finger-pointing?

Tensions on simple things, from the Enstone side, like "why is the driver lineup Ocon & Gasly and not Alonso & Piastri" or "why is the power unit (alledgedly) down on power and 'costing' us 3 tenths per lap" and conversely, from the Viry side, "why is the chassis development rate subpar compared to Aston Martin and McLaren" and "why are you not adding performance to the chassis rapidly?", can (presumably) simmer over in explosive fashion with the dismissal of 15 senior Enstone employees?

Is the dismissal of 15 senior Enstone employees, including the "anti-French" Permane, enough to convert Enstone from mere "mercenaries" for hire (who are primarily interested in looking out for themselves and protecting the Enstone clique?) to instead being proudly the French national team? Perhaps. We will see.

Newey decided to clear out the employees set in their ways who saw Milton-Keynes as Jaguar or Stewart and not 'Red Bull Racing' and this worked well.

Otherwise, perhaps Groupe Renault could purchase Oreca and move Alpine F1 operations there?

[Espresso]

Agree. They should take clear and decisive measures and rebuild from there.
Alpine needs a drastic cleanup and better put everything in one place, wherever that may be.

Soft change doesn’t work. They have proven that themselves….sadly.

Clear out the rubbish, including the ‘Vitamin C’ employees (C as in Connections).

[FW17]

Fair point.

But Alpine F1 team being in Paris would bring a lot more stability to the project by being closer to the Group HQ.

Maybe more stability in overall terms, but have in mind that most of the employees in Enstone are from the UK and won't move to France. They would start almost from zero...

Apparently Permane is toxic and anti-French:

I think that the rising morale of the troops is mainly due to the fact that Permane, Szafnauer, etc. were fired, and frankly, they were useless. I was already with Permane when I was at Renault in 2003, and Renault took him off the race team because they couldn’t stand him on the race team any longer and was toxic, and put him on the test team. When he returned to the test team, he tired everyone out, and he’s been with the team for 34 years. I think it was the right thing to do, bravo Bruno Famin. Because you should also know that Permane can’t stand French drivers.

- Franck Montagny
https://las-motorsport.com/f1/news/toxi ... gny/12302/



Naturally moving to the team to France would solve the problem of all these dreadful English employees.

Enstone won two '05 and '06, and had good cars in 2010-2012. The location is not the problem.

Would it not reduce factional tensions (the narrative from the likes of Montagny) and scrutiny on partially publicly-owned Groupe Renault spending if (what is after all) the French national Formula One team was actually based in France?

Permane had been critical of the French drivers on the team and had claimed that if the team had a better engine and different drivers (a better result would have been achieved at Monaco).

https://las-motorsport.com/f1/news/toxi ... gny/12302/



Surely having the skilled experts at Viry handling the entire operation is better than having the "useless" (Montagny) "amateurs" (Rossi) at Enstone do a poor job on the chassis whilst crudely blaming Viry for delivering a subpar power unit.

Yes, having the operation in Enstone worked well in 2005-2006. But with Alpine increasingly being positioned as the French national Formula One team, surely having such a large part of the operation abroad in England creates the potential for too many factional rivalries and much finger-pointing?

Tensions on simple things, from the Enstone side, like "why is the driver lineup Ocon & Gasly and not Alonso & Piastri" or "why is the power unit (alledgedly) down on power and 'costing' us 3 tenths per lap" and conversely, from the Viry side, "why is the chassis development rate subpar compared to Aston Martin and McLaren" and "why are you not adding performance to the chassis rapidly?", can (presumably) simmer over in explosive fashion with the dismissal of 15 senior Enstone employees?

Is the dismissal of 15 senior Enstone employees, including the "anti-French" Permane, enough to convert Enstone from mere "mercenaries" for hire (who are primarily interested in looking out for themselves and protecting the Enstone clique?) to instead being proudly the French national team? Perhaps. We will see.

Newey decided to clear out the employees set in their ways who saw Milton-Keynes as Jaguar or Stewart and not 'Red Bull Racing' and this worked well.

Otherwise, perhaps Groupe Renault could purchase Oreca and move Alpine F1 operations there?

Agree with every point, specially with it being more justifiable for a French team to be in France to the Renault Board


They are still talking 100 race / 5 year plan, Nothing to loose by shutting Enstone down.

[AR3-GP]

Agree with every point, specially with it being more justifiable for a French team to be in France to the Renault Board


They are still talking 100 race / 5 year plan, Nothing to loose by shutting Enstone down.

Yes, just like every Renault is manufactured in france


I don't understand why some want them to move to France to badly. It makes little economic sense. That kind of move would set them back 5-7 years.

[diffuser]

Would it? At least it would be "made in France" which is very important.

I understand that Renault have only spent 70m GBP upgrading the Enstone factory since 2016, so building an entire new factory (as Aston Martin Racing have recently done) is unlikely to cost more than 3-4x that.




Politically savvy Renault could no doubt negotiate a concession for this move.




To the contrary, they would have pick of the best engineering talent instead of competing with six other Formula One teams! Renault road car engineers could be rotated through the Grand Prix team, like the "Honda way".

It would allow Famin to oversee both engine and chassis on the same site.

It is always better to have everything under one roof. Enstone just does not work anymore, they should move to Paris.

It is not just French engineers, they would have an easier time hiring within the EU without having to compete for talent among the 7 teams already based in the UK.

Mod edit: <someting about Paris and crime>. Bile removed.

Metropolises have always had challenges with that stuff. Even if that were true about Paris, how many F1 teams are in London? The likelihood of them ending up in Paris is 0%, in my opinion. If I were planning this, I'd look into building near/on Paul Ricard. Lots of free space on that track to build and it's 10km north of the French riviera.

Don't forget 24% of Alpine F1 was sold to an American group. They even have a member on the board. So moving a team, just for making it "More french", isn't gonna fly that easily. You'll need real studies to prove those benefits, which Alpine would have likely have wanted as well, are really there. I would not be surprised to hear that those studies have already been done and the move found not to make much difference.

A team that sold 24% of its stake to open Alpine show rooms in North America does NOT sounds like it's ready to spend the money needed for that kind of move even If they could get past all the other hurdles.

[MIKEY_!]

The truthh is just now starting to come out ....https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-al ... /10503680/

In 2022 Alonso had claimed he wasn't negotiating with Otmar, he was negotiating with Rossi.

Does anyone really believe this, what with Alonso changing his story?

Anyways, glad Szafnauer is out of F1 - what a peice of work he was

I am yet to understand the hate some people feel towards Szafnauer. Apart from his uncalled-for comment about Piastri's loyalty (something he may have been under pressure from above to say - it sounded exactly like the sort of thing Rossi says), I don't see what he's done to justify all the hate.

I think that the rising morale of the troops is mainly due to the fact that Permane, Szafnauer, etc. were fired, and frankly, they were useless. I was already with Permane when I was at Renault in 2003, and Renault took him off the race team because they couldn’t stand him on the race team any longer and was toxic, and put him on the test team. When he returned to the test team, he tired everyone out, and he’s been with the team for 34 years. I think it was the right thing to do, bravo Bruno Famin. Because you should also know that Permane can’t stand French drivers.
- Franck Montagny

Which is more likely: Permane is anti-french but kept his job at a team that was mostly french-owned for so many years - or that Renault Group is resorting to character assassination to justify the sackings and cover up their toxic corporate culture and unrealistic expectations? My money is on the latter.

[mclaren111]

The truthh is just now starting to come out ....https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-al ... /10503680/

In 2022 Alonso had claimed he wasn't negotiating with Otmar, he was negotiating with Rossi.

Does anyone really believe this, what with Alonso changing his story?

Anyways, glad Szafnauer is out of F1 - what a peice of work he was

I am yet to understand the hate some people feel towards Szafnauer. Apart from his uncalled-for comment about Piastri's loyalty (something he may have been under pressure from above to say - it sounded exactly like the sort of thing Rossi says), I don't see what he's done to justify all the hate.

I think that the rising morale of the troops is mainly due to the fact that Permane, Szafnauer, etc. were fired, and frankly, they were useless. I was already with Permane when I was at Renault in 2003, and Renault took him off the race team because they couldn’t stand him on the race team any longer and was toxic, and put him on the test team. When he returned to the test team, he tired everyone out, and he’s been with the team for 34 years. I think it was the right thing to do, bravo Bruno Famin. Because you should also know that Permane can’t stand French drivers.
- Franck Montagny

Which is more likely: Permane is anti-french but kept his job at a team that was mostly french-owned for so many years - or that Renault Group is resorting to character assassination to justify the sackings and cover up their toxic corporate culture and unrealistic expectations? My money is on the latter.

Spot On...

[peewon]

The truthh is just now starting to come out ....https://it.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-al ... /10503680/

In 2022 Alonso had claimed he wasn't negotiating with Otmar, he was negotiating with Rossi.

Does anyone really believe this, what with Alonso changing his story?

Anyways, glad Szafnauer is out of F1 - what a peice of work he was

I am yet to understand the hate some people feel towards Szafnauer. Apart from his uncalled-for comment about Piastri's loyalty (something he may have been under pressure from above to say - it sounded exactly like the sort of thing Rossi says), I don't see what he's done to justify all the hate.

I think that the rising morale of the troops is mainly due to the fact that Permane, Szafnauer, etc. were fired, and frankly, they were useless. I was already with Permane when I was at Renault in 2003, and Renault took him off the race team because they couldn’t stand him on the race team any longer and was toxic, and put him on the test team. When he returned to the test team, he tired everyone out, and he’s been with the team for 34 years. I think it was the right thing to do, bravo Bruno Famin. Because you should also know that Permane can’t stand French drivers.
- Franck Montagny

Which is more likely: Permane is anti-french but kept his job at a team that was mostly french-owned for so many years - or that Renault Group is resorting to character assassination to justify the sackings and cover up their toxic corporate culture and unrealistic expectations? My money is on the latter.

To me, Otmar always came off as the biggest brown noser to the point which would make partisan politicians blush. Also, he has always seemed to have a weaselly quality to him since Racing Point days where he refuses to accept any responsibility and always has someone to blame.

With Alonso, with regard to his lost points due to reliability issues, Szaufner said "It's not that we're failing Fernando, there are several reasons why he hasn't scored points. I remember the battle with Mick Schumacher [at Imola], a touch made a hole in the sidepod. His defence in Canada against Bottas cost him a penalty, just like in Miami.”

The Imola incident was Schumacher's fault. In Canada, the PU was already compromised and poor strategy compounded the problem which Alonso tried to compensate for and made a desperate move. Regardless, that maybe cost them 4-5 points vs 50-60 lost undeniably due to reliability issues. What a bizarre way to undercut your driver in the media.

Also, prior to the AM announcement, Szafnauer made multiple comments about his age in the media, to the effect of needing to prove himself even though he was faster than Ocon who already received an extension.

Its one thing to follow orders of your boss but its another to blatantly lie in the media in order to character assassinate a rookie who is yet to race in F1.The hitman gets as much blame as the person who called the hit. With Otmar, he seemed to be almost gleeful to do Rossi's dirty work and probably deserves all the blame for how he went about doing it.

[FW17]

Which is more likely: Permane is anti-french but kept his job at a team that was mostly french-owned for so many years - or that Renault Group is resorting to character assassination to justify the sackings and cover up their toxic corporate culture and unrealistic expectations? My money is on the latter.

Why would Group Renault need to justify their actions publicly about firing of 2 executives?

[MIKEY_!]

To me, Otmar always came off as the biggest brown noser to the point which would make partisan politicians blush. Also, he has always seemed to have a weaselly quality to him since Racing Point days where he refuses to accept any responsibility and always has someone to blame.

With Alonso, with regard to his lost points due to reliability issues, Szaufner said "It's not that we're failing Fernando, there are several reasons why he hasn't scored points. I remember the battle with Mick Schumacher [at Imola], a touch made a hole in the sidepod. His defence in Canada against Bottas cost him a penalty, just like in Miami.”

The Imola incident was Schumacher's fault. In Canada, the PU was already compromised and poor strategy compounded the problem which Alonso tried to compensate for and made a desperate move. Regardless, that maybe cost them 4-5 points vs 50-60 lost undeniably due to reliability issues. What a bizarre way to undercut your driver in the media.

Also, prior to the AM announcement, Szafnauer made multiple comments about his age in the media, to the effect of needing to prove himself even though he was faster than Ocon who already received an extension.

Its one thing to follow orders of your boss but its another to blatantly lie in the media in order to character assassinate a rookie who is yet to race in F1.The hitman gets as much blame as the person who called the hit. With Otmar, he seemed to be almost gleeful to do Rossi's dirty work and probably deserves all the blame for how he went about doing it.

Re unreliability, Otmar went on to say (in that very same quote): "But we must understand what has happened. We have to solve all the little problems, so that they don't reappear in the car." So he did in fact accept blame for things that were in the team's control. You have to remember this came in the context of Alonso incessantly complaining about the team costing him an ever-growing (somewhat exaggerated) number of points (so much so it became a running joke at Alonso's expense) and Alonso pointing out that "Esteban's car is always reliable". When your driver is constantly undercutting the team in the media, and the media keeps asking you to comment on your driver's criticism, sooner or later the boss has to stick up for the other 500 employees a little bit. Hard to blame Otmar for this one.

As for Otmar's comments about Alonso's age, it was always about the reality that eventually Alonso's age would catch up with him, and the team wanted some flexibility for when that happened. I have seen nothing about expecting Alonso to "prove himself". If you go back and look at the quotes you'll see it was all pretty reasonable stuff. Even Alonso didn't criticise Otmar about it at the time. Again, hard to blame Otmar here.

I haven't seen anything gleeful about Otmar doing Rossi's dirty work - maybe your interpretation is coloured by already disliking him.