Alpine team boss adamant change ‘needed’ as yet another key person leaves

Parting ways with Laurent Rossi, Otmar Szafnauer and Bob Bell in less than 12 months, Alpine team boss Bruno Famin says “very quickly” he knew big changes were needed at the Enstone team.

The Alpine F1 team has undergone massive changes over the past 12 months starting with the sacking of CEO Rossi while earlier this month Bell capped the big changes when it was announced he had left the team to join Aston Martin.

Another key person in Bob Bell has left Alpine

Following on from the departures of Otmar Szafnauer and Alain Permane, Bell’s exit was widely billed as the latest brain drain from the team that qualified at the very back of the Bahrain GP grid.

The opening weekend of the season was anything but a success for the overweight Alpine team, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly were slowest of all in qualifying before bringing their A524s home in 17th and 18th places.

Worse yet, the team concedes there’s no quick fix.

But despite losing Bell shortly after the Bahrain weekend, Famin is adamant the situation is anything but bleak, Alpine needed change and change is what’s happening.

“When I arrived seven months ago,” the team boss, who replaced Rossi last July, told the media, “I started to think about it.

“Of course, it took some time, we had quite simple things to do to improve the mindset, to improve the operational set-up.

“I took time to know the people to how it worked in Enstone, in Viry, then I had in mind we need to change things.”

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“We needed to change, we have changed. I’m very happy with the people we have now,” he added.

“Because we have really fresh blood, new mindset, good mindset, fighting spirit, and we’ll never bring everybody together to generate the dynamic we need.”

But after their Bahrain disappointment, the big question is what’s next for Alpine in their recovery journey.

“We’ve started, it will be an endless process because we need to constantly improve,” he replied.

“We hope to quite quickly bring new ways, new processes, which will help in developing the A524 which is a totally car, which was difficult in Bahrain, which was a totally new track for the car.

“We will develop it and everything we know about this car, and the way we will work around this car in understanding the problems, solving the problems, improving the performance, will be very helpful for A526 [2026 car, ed.], which will be a key project with new regulations.”

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