Alpine Formula 1 boss Bruno Famin admits that the team has taken inspiration from McLaren’s revival last season with its updated three-pronged technical structure.
Amid a disastrous start to the season in Bahrain where its cars qualified on the back row, Alpine announced a series of changes within its organisation had taken place.
Both Technical Matt Harman and Head of Aerodynamics Dirk de Beer have resigned, with the Enstone squad adopting a revised arrangement comprising three heads.
The duties will be carried out by Joe Burnell (engineering), Ciaron Pilbeam (performance) and David Wheather (aerodynamics), who will all report directly to Famin.
Alpine’s latest move to reinvigorate its failing F1 operation has drawn similarities to the set-up that McLaren put in place to reverse its flailing fortunes 12 months ago.
McLaren opted to dispense with the model of a single Technical Director with the departure of James Key, instead reverting to a new structure with Peter Prodromou (Aerodynamics), Neil Houldey (Engineering and Design) and David Sanchez (Car Concept and Performance), who arrived from Ferrari at the turn of the year.
The Woking-based outfit transformed into a regular contender for podium results, and Famin has confirmed that Alpine had been keeping track of McLaren’s turnaround.
“For sure, we have seen that,” Famin told Autosport. “It gave us the answer to the question if it may work, and it looks like it’s working.
“I’m not saying it will make everything of course, but we have seen with McLaren that this kind of this kind of organisation can give a boost. And this is what we’re looking for.
“I think a very vertical structure is less reactive, less adapted to modern F1, where everything is so complex. You just need everybody to move forward all together in parallel, of course, constantly exchanging information and communication.”
However, Famin has denied that Alpine’s disastrous start to the season with an uncompetitive and overweight A524 was behind the sequence of recent internal changes.
“The timeline of the changes has nothing to do with the performance of the weekend,” he revealed.
“There is no link between our performance and Matt and Dirk’s departure. The real thing is that we have been thinking about how to move to the next step in the Alpine project.
“For quite some time now. and even when it was Renault before, we are making one step forward, one step backward, two steps forward, one backward, etcetera.
“We are not really generating the dynamic of progress that we want to have. And then we thought that it was time to change our approach from the technical point of view, and that’s the real reason for the changes.”
Famin stressed the importance of the modifications reflecting “a signal” that the Anglo-French marque is breaking with old traditions and embarking upon a new phase.
“When you are discussing with people, you have to be on the same line of what we want to do, and on how to do it,” he noted.
“And we talked a lot about many things, of course, and how we need to have a common understanding of what to do. Not doing the same thing, always with the same people, will change our final result, to say it like that.
“We need to change the processes, we need to change some people, to send a signal that we are entering into the new phases of the project.
“Having the three technical directions specialised in performance, engineering and aero is for us the way of exploiting or using more the potential of all the guys.
“It’s giving a signal to all the technical crews and people developing the car, racing the car, developing the tools in simulation, the simulator and so on that everybody’s walking in parallel for a common goal.”
Famin, who took over from Otmar Szafnauer last term, concedes that he wants to see constant improvement compared to spikes in performance from season-to-season.
“The dynamic I’m talking about is we want to be on the trajectory of progress from year to year,” he said. “Of course, with ups and downs, we know that it’s not so easy in F1.
“I’m talking about the multi-year dynamic, where we may be constantly closer and closer to the top, which is our aim to be able, in the medium term, to fight for wins.
“And not to be one year fourth in the championship, second year sixth. We really need to be able to develop a team able to fight for the top three.”
