Former Alpine F1 team boss Otmar Szafnauer has said the ownership structure of the team had “no idea about motor racing”, leading to a decision to part ways.

Szafnauer and Alpine parted ways in the middle of 2023, with the former team boss replaced by Bruno Famin as the Enstone-based squad went through a tumultuous period of change.

Otmar Szafnauer: Alpine owners’ expectations not in line with reality

Szafnauer had moved to Alpine from a long tenure at Force India and into the early stages of the current Aston Martin team following Lawrence Stroll’s acquisition of Vijay Mallya’s squad.

But Szafnauer was destined to not spend very long at the Renault-owned Alpine squad, with the two sides parting ways in the middle of 2023 as Groupe Renault opted for change at the top of the team – this included replacing Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi with the incumbent Philippe Krief.

Shortly before Rossi’s exit from the role, he had pointed to team boss Otmar Szafnauer as being responsible for the performance issues at the F1 team as he said, “It is Otmar and the rest of his team as Otmar alone doesn’t do everything – but the buck stops with Otmar. It’s Otmar’s responsibility, yes.”

In June 2023, 24 percent of the shares of Alpine were sold to US-based investment group Otro Capital, which includes RedBird Capital Partners and Maximum Effort Investments. The 24 percent share was sold for just over €200 million, with the investment group boasting high-profile names such as Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney – the owners of British football team Wrexham FC.

Also involved were world champion boxer Anthony Joshua, English footballer Trent Alexander-Arnold, golfer Rory McIlroy, and Superbowl quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

There was only some brief overlap between the ownership structure of Alpine/Otro Capital with Sazafnauer’s tenure, but the Romanian-American has said he wasn’t happy with the ownership’s decisions and their desire for immediate success.

“When I look back at it from a macro perspective, at the entire ownership structure of Formula 1 now – in the days of Eddie Jordan, Frank Williams, Ron Dennis, or Adrian Reynard at British American Racing, you had owners that deeply understood motor racing, deeply,” he said on the Formula For Success podcast.

“[They] often came up from the lower ranks, either as racers themselves or were junior designers, mechanics, or whatever it was, but they had a deep understanding of motor racing – a deep understanding of Formula 1.

“Even Vijay raced himself in India and, because of it, he had some understanding of motor racing, and he left us enough time to make a difference.

“If you have a deep understanding of motor racing, you know what it takes. You know that there is no Messiah, there is no magic wand. It takes sustained, long, and good work to end up winning, because everyone else is competent too.

“But the new ownership isn’t like that. They have very little understanding of motor racing. They look at Formula 1 as a sport, they look at football teams that can change five players from one year to the next and go from mid-table to winning, and they think the same can happen in motorsport.

“Especially Formula 1, that can’t happen – it takes a long time to sustain getting better year on year, to sustain improvement year on year and eventually winning.

“When you look back at Adrian Newey’s success at Red Bull, it took him five years to win a championship. Mercedes’ success when they bought Brawn, who had just won a world championship – it took them five years to win again, to win another World Championship, and those are teams that have done it very quickly, and not everyone can do it that quickly.

“So it takes time, and I quickly realized that at Renault, or Alpine, the ownership had no idea about motor racing, and their expectations were not in line with reality.

“They wanted success overnight. They wanted me to fire everybody, like on a football team. They wanted me to change 20 percent of the employees.

“And when I said, ‘No, that’s not the way to do it. I can’t fire people that are doing a good job to change a culture. It’s not how you go about things’, I knew it was time, that they had different thoughts on how to run a Formula 1 team, and I just couldn’t stay.”

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Following Szafnauer’s departure, the team appointed Famin as an internal promotion into the team principal role, but Famin himself was to be replaced a year later as Alpine went through more management changes. With Luca de Meo remaining in charge as Groupe Renault CEO, he appointed former Renault team boss Flavio Briatore as an executive advisor with successful junior category team owner Oli Oakes being appointed as team boss.

The triumvirate of power at Alpine began at the same point in time as Renault’s decision to repurpose its Viry-Chatillion engine plant and step away from F1 power unit manufacturing, with Alpine set to become a Mercedes power unit customer – a move that has led to speculation that the team is being packaged up for an eventual sale, speculation the team firmly denies.

As for Szafnauer, his period of gardening leave has come to an end, with the now 60-year-old eager to find a new challenge in Formula 1.

“If I can help a team with my knowledge and experience to do better than they currently are, to move them up the grid, I would like that as a challenge,” he told PlanetF1.com recently in an exclusive interview.

“But it’s got to be in the right position. The position has to have enough input into the entire organisation to make a difference.

“I don’t want to work for a team, just to work for a team. I want to have the latitude and authority to actually make a difference, and the decisions that I make or help with have an impact.”

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