Otmar Szafnauer pinpoints the significant mistake Alpine made when they lost Oscar Piastri to McLaren

Oscar Piastri could be on his way to becoming the first driver since Lewis Hamilton to stop Max Verstappen winning a Formula 1 title.

McLaren’s Australian driver is currently leading the drivers’ championship heading into the Monaco Grand Prix after a stunning start to the season.

Oscar Piastri has won four of the first seven races this season but will feel he missed an opportunity to add to that tally at Imola.

Piastri lamented letting Max Verstappen pass him on the opening corner which ultimately decided the result of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

However, the 24-year-old will be well aware that his fate in Formula 1 could have been very different.

In 2022, Alpine believed that they had secured Piastri’s future after supporting him through the junior categories.

They had lined him up to start the 2023 F1 season after a year as the team’s reserve driver following his Formula 2 championship victory.

That plan quickly fell apart for Alpine, and former team principal Otmar Szafnauer has explained what went wrong and why they ended up missing out on the Australian star.

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Otmar Szafnauer laments Alpine’s contract mistake with Oscar Piastri

Szafnauer was asked on The Team Principal Podcast what he could have done differently to stop Alpine from losing Piastri to McLaren and explained: “I’ll tell you what I could have done differently, is I could have started in October and then I would have been there in November.

“They had two weeks to sign Oscar from November 1 to November 15.

“Once you didn’t do it in those two weeks, that’s it. Contractually, you didn’t have any rights anymore.

“So, when I start in March, those two weeks are gone. And guess what? You can’t turn back the hands of time.

“I guess we have to ask Flux Capacitor in the DeLorean, Back to the Future.

“That contract with Oscar once we got past mid-November, two weeks in November, that was it.”

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Why Otmar Szafnauer wasn’t happy with Oscar Piastri before his Alpine exit

Szafnauer commented during the furore back in 2022 that Piastri should have acted with more ‘integrity’ during his time with the team.

Asked whether he regretted saying that, he continued: “I don’t regret that. We ran Oscar for over 5,000 kilometres in a two-year-old car.

“That was a significant amount of money, millions to do that. And if Oscar knew that he was using Alpine to get that mileage under his belt and seat time in a two-year-old car knowing he was off to McLaren, that’s what I meant by that.

“If you [McLaren] spot an opportunity like that and you think you can get them as they did, that’s okay.

“It’s just this notion of undue enrichment. You take part of a contract on one hand, and then you don’t fulfil your bit of the contract. And that’s the bit that I was talking about.”

Piastri benefited greatly from working with Fernando Alonso at Alpine and it only emphasises the mistake the team made that both drivers were allowed to leave that winter.

However, the youngster isn’t infallible as his first corner mistake at Imola highlighted.

Andrea Stella may not have helped Piastri with some advice before last Sunday’s race, but in the heat of the action, he needs to rely on his instincts to get the better of the four-time world champion.

For Alpine, promoting from within hasn’t worked out since Piastri’s departure, with Jack Doohan replaced after six races this season, and Franco Colapinto brought in from Williams to leapfrog any of the youngsters who are working their way through the team’s ranks.