Alpine reveals reason for radical staff changes

Alpine Vice President Bruno Famin has explained differences behind the "timeline" of its 100 race plan as the reasoning behind the shock departures of Otmar Szafnauer and Alan Permane.

The team announced on Friday afternoon that Team Principal Szafnauer and Sporting Director Permane would be leaving their positions after the Belgian Grand Prix, having been at Enstone since 2022 and 1989, respectively.

Famin will step up to lead the team on an interim basis and indicated that disagreements over the team's plan to fight for wins and titles were the root cause behind the double departure, which comes the week after Laurent Rossi was removed as CEO.

Alpine departures explained

"With Otmar and Alan, they are great people and we thank them for what they brought to the team, it was a very long time, 34 years for Alan at Enstone and with Otmar we secured fourth place in the Constructors last year," Famin told media including RacingNews365.

"But we were not on the line for the timeline for how to recover and reach the level of performance we are aiming for, and we agreed to split ways.

"It is a decision of top management.

"It is not something that has been decided one day to another, we have been talking for a week and I was appointed vice-president two weeks ago and started working before so it is quite a long story. I am working with top management.

"We've been discussing for a while what we needed to do for the timeline for the evolution we required in the team and we discussed [with Szafnauer and Permane] and decided to split ways."