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The 2023 season was a turbulent time for Alpine, with the team seeing an exodus of key personnel.
Alpine seemed to haemorrhage team members in 2023. The departure of team principal Otmar Szafnauer was the greatest surprise of all, the American leaving Alpine after only 18 months in the role. Szafnauer has since been replaced by interim team principal Bruno Famin.
Along with Szafnauer, 2023 saw Alpine lose sporting director Alan Permane and chief technical officer Pat Fry. CEO Laurent Rossi was also ousted from his role, and in turn was replaced by Philippe Krief.
Despite the magnitude of these changes, Bruno Famin views the leadership restructure in a positive light. “We made some quite good, quite big changes at the end of July within the team, and this created a new mindset on the track-side team,” Famin told RacingNews365.
“I’m quite happy with what I’ve seen so far,” continued Famin. “I think we made some quite good races in terms of strategy execution since then.”
Positive outlook
The 2023 season was a mixed bag for Alpine. The French team enjoyed two podiums: one achieved by Esteban Ocon at the prestigious Monaco Grand Prix, the other by Pierre Gasly at the Dutch Grand Prix. However, Alpine only finished fourth overall in the Constructors’ Championship — a drop in performance from its P4 finish in 2022.
“I’m still assessing with both the factories, to really see how to extract more performance,” Famin said of the work being done over the off-season. “I think one of the key things is trying to get all the people working together: both sites but also within each of the sites, to extract all the potential we have.”
“We have a lot of potential, but the difficulty is to put everybody together, everything together, to create more performance, this is what I’m assessing now.”
Featured Image Credit: Reuters
