Alpine announces technical restructure following poor 2024 start

Alpine has announced a raft of organisational changes in its technical department following a poor start to the 2024 season.

Fears that the A524 was off the pace were realised in Bahrain when Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon qualified on the back-row of the grid with the car proving overweight and under-powered.

RacingNews365 exclusively revealed on Saturday that Technical Director Matt Harman and Head of Aerodynamics Dirk de Beer had tendered their resignations, with the team now annoucing a new three-pillared approach to its technical leadership.

The new roles of Technical Director (Performance), Technical Director (Aerodynamics) and Technical Director (Engineering) will replace Harman's singular Technical Director role.

It is a similar approach to what McLaren put in place for 2024 following the departure of James Key.

The new positions will be filled by Ciaron Pilbeam, David Wheater and Joe Burnell, respectively with Pilbeam once Mark Webber's race engineer at Red Bull.

The trio will report to Team Principal Bruno Famin.

On the power unit side, Viry is headed by power unit technical director Eric Meignan with Alpine also confirming John Woods and Audrey Vastroux as Chief Operating Officers at Enstone and Viry respectively.

"We have decided to make these organisational changes as we can clearly see that we are not where we want nor need to be in terms of performance level and it is time to take another step in terms of organisation and people," explained Famin - who was officially confirmed as Team Principal earlier in 2024 after an interim spell following Otmar Szafnauer's departure in mid-2023.

"The new three-pillared structure with three Technical Directors, each specialising in different areas, will bring better work and collaboration across our technical areas and contribute to delivering performance from the factories to the race track.

"I trust fully in the abilities of Joe, David and Ciaron to work closely together in bringing the team the performance and improvements that it needs.

"Finally, I would like to thank Matt and Dirk for their efforts over the last couple of years at the team and wish them the very best in the next chapter of their careers."