“We will take those learnings,” Otmar Szafnauer reveals Alpine would not commit Oscar Piastri-like “contract blunder” again

Otmar Szafnauer lost out on the services of Oscar Piastri after a loophole allowed the Australian, to make the switch to the Woking-based McLaren F1 Team.

Otmar Szafnauer has recently brought that saga to light again and revealed that Alpine, wishes to learn from its mistakes and make its future driver development contracts air-tight.

In July, this year, Sebastian Vettel made the announcement of his retiring from the F1, and from that point onward, many things were put into motion.

Firstly, Fernando Alonso dropped a bombshell by revealing that he has signed a multi-year deal with Aston Martin from 2023 onward, and then secondly, Alpine by its own accord, announced that Oscar Piastri was promoted to the driver role on the team for the next year.

However, things got out of hand when the young Australian simply denied the claims of the Alpine F1 team via his various social media handles.

Things at Alpine during the summer break were in absolute shambles and ultimately, the 21-year-old was allowed to leave in favor of the McLaren outfit.

Otmar Szafnauer reveals that Alpine would do things differently in the future

The Oscar Piastri saga was a slap in the face of the Alpine F1 Team, as it brought with itself a lot of unwanted publicity, and Otmar Szafnauer has admitted that the French outfit would do things differently in the future.

While talking about it, he added, “What transpired over the summer isn’t what we had planned back in December [2021].”

“So, because it is not what we had planned, it’s safe to say we should have done things differently, so that the plan [to promote Piastri] would have actually come to fruition.”

“In the future, if we do this again, we will take those learnings and make sure that the loopholes that were there to allow Oscar to get out of the contract we thought we had with him.”

“It should be tighter, and maybe the timing should be different, so there are learnings [from it.]“

Otmar Szafnauer and Alpine going forward into the future are determined to not commit the Oscar Piastri type of mistake again.

However, F1 is an unpredictable sport on and off the track, and who knows, how the driver contracts would look in the upcoming years of the sport.