The Alpine CEO spoke for the first time about Alonso’s departure and attack on Piastri

laurent rossi spoke for the first time about what happened Alonso Y piastre in an interview on the official F1 website. In it, he clarified that the plan of Alpine is to continue on Alonso and they offered him one year with the option of another, with the idea that when he finished his second stint in F1, he could compete in other categories with Alpine As the WEC or even the Dakar. And he, they will replace Alonso with piastre from 2025, with a previous loan of two seasons at Williams to gain experience. According to Rossi, they couldn’t offer Alonso more than two years because of the risk of losing the jewel of his driver academy, but in the end, piastre signed by McLaren, by team, secret, and by pilot, with notice. Oscar said after the announcement of Alonso’s departure and Alpine’s announcement of his promotion to F1 that he would not drive for Alpine in 2023, and after a legal battle, the CRB decided that in favor of the driver’s contract, which was deposited a month before Alonso announced his decision to go to Aston Martin. Alpine received a lot of criticism for its handling of the situation. They had two pilots and were left without Esteban Ocon. Otmar Szafnauerboss Alpinealready gave his perspective on the situation a few weeks ago and now it’s the turn of Alpine’s CEO, along with CEO of Renault group, Luca de Meopresent in the paddock.

“Mr. Alonso”

“We want him to continue with us as an endurance and/or Dakar pilot,” Rossi said in the said interview. “So, with Fernando, we would like to continue. He was an incredible champion, he will continue to be a legend of our brand, but it didn’t work out and such is life. We will stay in good condition. He is an extraordinary champion, he is a gentleman, he continues to do an amazing job for us despite signing (with Aston Martin). We are sad to part, but we are still family. This is life. It is a blow to lose a champion, but it happens”, said Laurent, who offered good words to the two-time champion and did not criticize him, proving that the Asturian left through the front door and not through the back door .

“I wasn’t expecting Oscar, it’s frankly disappointing.”

Laurent Rossi had stronger words with Oscar Piastri, hurt by what young pearl from the academy that Alpine helped in the lower categories to reach F1, left them in poverty. According to Rossi, Piastri has committed to Alpine in a ‘Head of Terms’ document, so that the pilot can progress in his academy for a long time and then transfer it to Williams while Alonso continues to drive. But Oscar decided to go to McLaren.

“We reached our commitment to Oscar very quickly, as we exercised our option on November 15, agreeing to a Chief of Terms that he said was reserved. He will receive an extensive training program, among other things, 5,000 km of piloting throughout the year, and we will find him a place to pilot in 2023 and 2024″, he clarified.

“We did that. We announced it as a reservation the next day. We quickly created a training program and a 5,000km test program, which started in February with Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon. This is a serious training program. I drive with two F1 drivers and I can learn from them.” And he continued to assure that he “drove 3,700 km in August.”

“We could have easily reached 5,000 km. We gave him full access to the team, reports, technical meetings and he was with me every Sunday listening to the race. Not only was he a reserve, but he would have been the most trained rookie of all time. He knows how the team works, how an F1 driver works in the team. We feel fulfilled. And we went further. We hire someone just to find him a seat on another team because we want to do it right. At the end of April, we found him a seat at Williams,” he said.

Piastri warned, but in half: He said there was interest from McLaren but that he would not sign

But when Alpine found him a place at Williams and the McLaren opportunity opened up for him, Piastri decided to go his own way, leaving Alpine with one hand on the back and the other on the front. “When the Williams opportunity was about to become a concrete deal, they (Piastri’s team) said: ‘we have a possible opportunity at McLaren'”. A bit disappointing. We felt like that was a little weird, because we were expecting a little more loyalty considering how much (money and time) we put into it. He didn’t say he was leaving, he said he had a chance.”

“Then we saw in July, that Ricciardo was confirmed for next year (days later, Piastri would sign for McLaren without anyone knowing). So we thought yes there is interest, but maybe he doesn’t have a seat yet, maybe he had a chance (at McLaren), but the door is closing, so Oscar is still with us. This explains why we decided to promote him: he was a reserve and we brought him up as a pilot”, he pointed out about Piastri’s announcement as a pilot for 2023, which Oscar rejected on Twitter, leaving the group in a very bad situation in the face of public opinion.

“Otmar Szafnauer (Team Principal of the Alpine team) saw him, told him that we will promote him and we announced it. We don’t know for sure that he will sign with McLaren. He didn’t tell us. We still believe that the seat at Williams is very good, a good opportunity to learn without too much pressure: a very good team to learn from, very experienced, able to develop talents like George Russell, who spent three year in the team as a kind of apprentice before being called to Mercedes”, he taught. But yes, Oscar has signed for McLaren within a month.

Defend the administration

“We understand that he is attracted by the prospect of a better sporting challenge. We felt that when we had the opportunity to offer him a better seat, he would compete with us because we are a team of work, we felt that we would offer it to him and he would accept it because there was no better option: Ricciardo would stay. But finally, McLaren announced that Daniel would not continue. He and Piastri were already tied.

“We act very logically, in line with our commitment to him. From our perspective, it’s a very linear and simple story. We are very engaged. I don’t think we can give any more drivers, to be honest.”

Piastri did not sign a contract with Alpine but the team thought he would be loyal

“He never signed any contract that we showed him. We present contracts many times. They were never signed. We couldn’t keep him because he didn’t sign a contract with us. We expected more loyalty”, he commented, hurt with the Australian driver for how much Alpine gave him so that he would later leave at the first change.

In a sense, Alpine’s CEO admitted that the team had made a mistake. “We made a mistake, we made some legal technical mistakes. We left the door open by not forcing him with a strict contract that he couldn’t move. Why did we do that? It’s a bit of an oversight because we don’t think that when you give someone too much, when you give them training, a reserve role, a seat in a team, they won’t take it after years of supporting them and winning championships in our support.”, he explained, very hurt.

“What george (Russell) before him, who went to Williams before returning to MercedesWhat Charles (Leclerc), who went to Sauber before returning to ferrariWhat Max (Verstappen) and count Sebastian (Vettel), who both rode for Toro Rosso before driving for Red Bull… they were all in a ‘junior’ team before moving up. I was a little surprised. I understand that, from a sports perspective, McLaren He might be more interesting based on pure track results than Williams, but we didn’t expect that after so much support, so much loyalty, they would use that back door to turn around and get what felt like a better contract for him. Those are not the values ​​we show”, he said emphatically, attacking the Australian pilot.

Szafnauer is confirmed

“This is how I see history. Of course we made mistakes, otherwise we wouldn’t be here to talk about it, but we think we stayed true to our promise, our values ​​and our words to Oscar. But I can say that things happen for a reason. We don’t share the same conceptions of things, and maybe we don’t share the same values, so maybe it’s better this way, separate.”, he concluded about Piastri, who reaffirmed Otmar Szafnauer in his position, highly criticized for what happened in these weeks.

“The roles are very clear. Otmar is the boss of the F1 team. I have complete trust in him. I have many teams with him. Upon his arrival he had a change. Keep making a difference. He has been hired to help me distance myself, since I have 16 direct reports,” he commented on the matter.

“Nothing will change, it works fine. We made mistakes. Clearly we will learn our lessons.”

Alonso’s replacement for 2023 is in no rush to be announced

Laurent Rossi also identified a possible replacement for Fernando Alonso next year at Alpine. Szafnauer said a few days ago that there were up to 14 candidates. Among them, the son of Mick Doohan, Jack Doohan, and pilots like Mick Schumacher or Pierre Gasly, although this last option is too complicated. Therefore, Rossi said that they are not in a hurry and the team will take time to make a decision.

“There will be bumps in the road. I’m not stupid, I know we’re going to have bad times, but the idea is to keep progressing. We are the fourth force on the grid and our seats are in high demand. all right. We will take our time. We don’t want to rush into a decision. It’s a process led by Otmar (Szafnauer), because he knows what’s best for the team. We received information from our engineers. The driver is important, but the car is the most important”, he concluded.