The Alpine CEO responded strongly to Alonso

Ferdinand Alonso weeks ago he explained the reasons for his departure from Aston-Martin. He assured that he felt more love and trust on the part of the leaders of Silverstone after what Alpine I don’t want to offer him more than a one-year renewal and another optional one and after seeing how they publicly wavered between his continuation and advancing a piastre who finally chose to stand up to them and go to McLaren. Laurent Rossi has already explained part of what happened at the last Italian GP, ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ piastre. However, in an interview granted to ‘Auto Motor und Sport’, Laurent Rossi was more forceful in his views on the man from Oviedo and his decision to leave Alpine.

Alpine has always reiterated through its leaders that Alpine did “the best” to keep Fernando, something the driver from Oviedo disagreed with. And this time, Laurent Rossi insisted that the French firm could not offer Fernando a longer contract because of his age. For Rossi, doing so would be “an irrational decision with risks” and one lack of responsibility.

“We cannot give Fernando what he wants. For more than two years we will not be held accountable”he declared.

“We could not commit for more than two years with Alonso because with Oscar Piastri we had an option of more than three years. For a long time, it was always clear to us that we had to focus on the future and that future was called Oscar”first said an Oscar found a two-year loan seat at Williams which he later turned down for McLaren, leaving Alpine without a driver to join Ocon next year.

“We offer Fernando the most we could, that is, a contract for one year plus another. We wanted to keep the man of the present and ensure the man of the future,” he said. The formula is clear: to continue with Fernando for one year and maybe in 2024 while Oscar works at Williams. But for Laurent, it was impossible to offer more to the Spaniards. “Alonso is 41 years old. In two years he will be 43. Decline (in performance, or decline) can occur from one year to another at these ages. I am responsible for more than 3,000 employees at Alpine and Luca de Meo is responsible for more than 240,000 at Renault. We cannot make irrational decisions that carry risks”he added bluntly, sure that Fernando “shouldn’t be bothered with the offer of one year and an option for another.”

Fernando pointed out at the end of August that he would prefer to be with a team like Aston Martin that doesn’t “look at his Passport” or scrutinize him every year. However, Rossi believes that this should not be a problem for Fernando, because if he had maintained the current level in 2023, he would have obviously exercised the option to renew for another year: “If his performance in the first year (2023) was the same as it is now, we would have pulled the option (for one more year). He knows. The only thing I can assume is that he received an offer elsewhere with better terms and decided to accept it.”

“We are sad about it, although not bitter. It is your right to choose someone else. We have parted ways for a good future and we know that Fernando will do his best until the end of the season.”

Rossi believes that Alonso has backed off

Besides feeling that Aston Martin is more expensive, Alonso assured that he will go to the English team because he has a “more ambitious project” than Alpine and he has all the elements to grow: budget, signing successful engineers and building a new facility. However, for the Alpine CEO, the Spanish move is backwards.

“Do you think two or three years (of the contract) makes a big difference to him? Now he will go to a racing team that is ninth in the World Championship. That means rebuilding the work you’ve already done with us.. Alpine is definitely less of a risk for him in sporting terms. Fernando’s time in F1 is also limited.”

On the other hand, Laurent Rossi emphasized that he could not make a higher offer because of the “sacrifices” that the employees of the Renault factories had to make.

“I could not set the bar arbitrarily high. We ask our employees in the factory to make sacrifices. We can’t overdo it in F1,” he said. F1 is not a toy for us, but a business. We would have liked Alonso to continue, he is the best champion he has driven for Renault, but we did not agree, without bad words and without knocking doors.”