Otmar Szafnauer was not aware of Laurent Rossi’s comments
Laurent Rossi, CEO of Alpine, had described the start of the season for the blues as unworthy considering the resources invested following various mishaps. The director of the Alpine team reacts.
The Enstone team had a slow and complicated start to the season, with a weekend of horrors in Baku where Alpine suffered a fire, an accident, and was forced to start Esteban Ocon from the pit lane, while neither him nor Pierre Gasly were able to finish the race after the chaos of the restart during the Australian GP.
Rossi declared that the team is not learning from its mistakes and that the performance in the first race in Bahrain was marked by “a lot of dilettantism” (note: in an amateur and pleasure-oriented manner) following the multiple penalties imposed on Ocon.
Szafnauer explained that he was not aware of Rossi’s comments, but he would talk to his boss about them, while reiterating their desire to improve.
« Reading something like that in the newspaper doesn’t add any more pressure, everyone wants to do well here,” said Szafnauer to the media in Miami, regarding Rossi’s comments in an interview with Canal+ during the Miami weekend.
« These are technicians and engineers with the highest level of experience, and we put pressure on ourselves, so we just need to solve the problem. I have no idea why these comments were made, you will have to ask him, but I will ask him. This weekend has been very busy and I haven’t had a chance to do it yet. »
We didn’t live up to expectations in Baku, the drivers collided in Australia, and during the first race, we had a multitude of penalties, starting with Esteban’s, who wasn’t in the right position on the starting grid.
« I don’t know if that’s why he made these comments, but I have to read them. All we can do when we have problems like the one in Baku is to find and understand the root cause of what happened, and make sure we put in place the necessary process or people to prevent it from happening again.
Alpine needs to maximize the capabilities of the A523.
Alpine scored 6 points in Miami with Gasly finishing in 8th place and Ocon in 9th, allowing them to score their first points since Saudi Arabia.
Otmar Szafnauer believes that extracting performance from the car is “the most difficult thing to do in Formula 1”.
« We must understand that the ultimate performance of the car doesn’t really happen, the hardest thing to do in Formula 1 is to ensure that the car has optimal performance, which is not the case here. »
The majority of the work on the car’s performance is therefore done in Enstone and Viry, and here, the goal is to ensure that we do not make any mistakes, that there are no engine fires, and that we do not have any incorrect settings in a race where you only have one hour of testing.
