Former Alpine Formula 1 boss Otmar Szafnauer has criticised his successor Bruno Famin as being “uninformed” regarding his blame over the team’s current troubles.
Szafnauer departed Alpine along with long-serving Sporting Director Alan Permane last summer amid a disagreement over the realistic timeline to attain F1 success.
The ex-Aston Martin Team Principal guided the Enstone-based squad to fourth in the Constructors’ Championship in 2022, but it sat sixth at the time of his departure.
However, Alpine’s situation has worsened since as an overhauled car concept has led to an overweight and uncompetitive A524 that has seen it fail to record a point.
Speaking to F1.com this month, Famin suggested that Szafnauer should be held responsible as “the car we have now is the result of previous management” in place.
But Szafnauer has hit back at that claim, citing how the timeline in which he and Permane were ousted means the duo had minimal influence on the car’s development.
“We have limited CFD and wind on time and geometries, so you can’t even use one wind tunnel to its full – probably half capacity, as well as CFD,” he said via The Race.
“So because of it and the way the [aerodynamic testing regulations] reporting structure goes almost everybody works on the current car up until the break.
“And then depending on how quickly you can produce the findings up until the break, some of those upgrades come as late as Singapore [in September].
“If you can produce them quicker, you get them on the car quicker, but generally Singapore is your last big upgrade.
“That last big upgrade in Singapore was conceived in June/July, right before the break.
“After the break, everyone switches to next year’s car. You might change a tub, you might change geometry, you might go from pullrod to pushrod, you change stuff. And when you change it, you mainly change it for aerodynamic benefit.
“So now you start your model changes and you’re starting to do different experiments that don’t necessarily apply to this year’s car. It’s what happened at Renault.
“Alan and I left in July and after we left, they started on next year’s car. And Pat [Fry] had resigned by then as well.
“So to the uninformed, you can say all these problems were caused by those guys, but I don’t think so.”
Alongside Szafnauer and Permane, who now works at RB, Fry also vacated his role as Alpine’s Chief Technical Officer to take up the exact same position at Williams.
The Englishman, who has gathered over 30 years of experience in the sport, criticised the parent Renault board for not retaining the “enthusiasm” needed to progress.
Asked whether he believed Renault understood the demands to achieve tangible success in the sport, Szafnauer answered: “Not from what I saw.”
He then later added: “Not just Renault but big car companies, even car companies that have racing as part of their DNA, shouldn’t meddle.
“It’s so much different from a car company, you should just leave it to the experts.
“The only similarities are: you have five wheels on a car and five in a racing car – four wheels and a steering wheel – and that’s it. The rest is so different.
“You call them a car, but the technology development is different, the technology you use is different, the level of the engineering that goes into it is different, the level of the education of the engineers is different.”
