“I’ll be asking him,” Otmar Szafnauer aims to find out why Alpine’s CEO called the team ‘amateurish’ and ‘mediocre’

Alpine are clearly not where they would want to be right now. In the championship standings, they sit sixth, level on 14 points with McLaren. This is quite disappointing, considering they were P4 last year, and would’ve, at the very least, liked to repeat that performance. But Aston Martin have jumped the Otmar Szafnauer-led team in the pecking order. All this means that their 100-race plan to get back toward the front is spiraling. Laurent Rossi, their CEO, is not pleased.

Rossi has criticized some of the team’s performances this season as ‘amateurish’, ‘mediocre’, and slammed them as unacceptable. In a separate interview, with F1.com, he had said that Szafnauer was responsible for the performance of the team. He didn’t stop at that. While the Frenchman did not directly mention the team principal, he said that, unless the situation turns around, there will be ‘consequences’. Rossi also refused to adjust the team’s target, keeping it at P4.

Szafnauer though, is unfazed. When asked by Motorsport.com if there was a ‘greater need’ to do better following Rossi’s comments, he said: “Reading something like that on paper puts no more pressure [on us]. Everyone wants to do well here. We’re very well experienced, with technicians and engineers at the highest level, and we put pressure on ourselves. So, we just have to fix it.”

Alpine’s team principal, saw the story, though he did not read it. He did admit: “But we underperformed in Baku. The drivers ran into each other in Australia, and I think at the first race, we had a myriad of penalties, starting with Esteban being out of place. It hasn’t been a smooth start to the season and maybe that’s why he made the comments. But I have to read them.”

Read More: “The buck stops with Otmar,” Alpine CEO warns Otmar Szafnauer and co. of ‘consequences’ amid disastrous start to 2023

Otmar Szafnauer has ‘no idea’ why Alpine CEO made such comments

Of course, Otmar Szafnauer, and the whole Alpine team are focused on remedying their issues. With or without the comments, that would’ve been their aim. On this, the Romanian-American said: “All we can do when we have issues like Baku is find and understand the root cause of why it happened, and make sure we either put the process or the people in place so that it doesn’t happen again.”

He did not know why Laurent Rossi made the comments, but he did want to find out. Szafnauer added: “I have no idea and you’ll have to ask him. I’ll be asking him. This weekend was so busy that I haven’t had a chance to discuss it.” Well, perhaps, the Frenchman wanted to give extra ‘incentive’ to his employees. Maybe he is already planning changes, as he has threatened to do before the end of the season if things don’t turn around.

Alpine now have a hard task on their hand. Right now, attaining P4 looks highly unlikely, if not impossible. The top four teams right now have a very large gap to the rest of the competition. Red Bull are the clear dominant team, while Aston Martin, Ferrari, and Mercedes behind them are relatively close to each other. But they still have a leg up on the competition. If Alpine want to get there, there must almost be a revolution of successful car upgrades.

In case you missed it:

• “We didn’t capitalise on opportunities” Pierre Gasly gives upsetting Alpine update amidst CEO Laurent Rossi’s “amateurish” remarks
• Alpine’s boss gives a brutally honest take on the team’s performance, labels it ‘amateurish and unacceptable’

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