Alpine strengthens its structure with Pat Fry and Matt Harman

Following the departure of Martin Budkowsky, Alpine has announced another change to its structure with the promotions of Pat Fry to the role of Chief Technical Officer and Matt Harman as Technical Director.

The Enstone-Viry-based squad announced in January that Budkowski, as well as Non-Executive Director Alain Prost, had left the team. They have now promoted ex-Ferrari and McLaren engineer Fry – formerly Alpine's Chassis Technical Director – to the role of CTO ahead of the 2022 season.

As CTO, Pat Fry will oversee all technical activities in Enstone, and will be responsible for setting the performance target of the car, defining the technical capabilities and competencies needed and identify future technologies and disruptors. He will ultimately arbitrate on major performance trade-offs and risks, and set the long term development strategy to maximise performance within the constraints of the cost cap.

Matt Harman, previously Engineering Director, will now take responsibility for delivering performance and experiments to the track, structuring the technical organisation and processes, plus growing talents and teams. He will oversee chassis technical direction and bring to the team his unique experience in chassis / power unit technical integration and trade-offs.

The team hopes that Harman's background as PU engineer will help strengthen the link to the engine department at Viry and further optimise PU integration. Harman was recruited from Mercedes in 2018, where he spent 18 years, covering a wide range of chassis projects.

Laurent Rossi, CEO of Alpine, said: “We are considerably strengthening Alpine F1 Team by having Pat and Matt at the helm of Engineering in Enstone. Pat is one of the most experienced engineers in Formula 1, while Matt’s drive and expertise will prove critical in extracting the full potential of our race cars, thanks in particular to his unique expertise combining chassis and engine development.”