Otmar Szafnauer has been appointed as Alpine Team Principal as part of an official restructure of management.
Szafnauer had previously served as Team Principal of Aston Martin (previously known as Racing Point and Force India) until he resigned in early January.
Szafnauer will lead the team from its Enstone base in the UK and upon confirmation of his appointment, he said: “I am thrilled to join BWT Alpine F1 Team and ready to get to work with everyone to achieve our challenge: bring the team to fight for the Championship within the next 100 races.”
Szafnauer’s immediate focus will be on preparing Alpine for the start of the 2022 season which gets under way in Bahrain next month, across the weekend of 18-20 March, although he iterated that “Alpine is fully armed to achieve its ambition,” as he begins his new role.
Alpine have also appointed Bruno Famin as Executive Director at its French base in Viry-Chatillon with Famin having recently served as Deputy Sport Secretary-General at FIA, after previously spending over 15 years working for Peugeot.
Speaking about the opportunity to work for a race team again, Famin admitted that it is “great” to be back working within a motorsport team, especially at Alpine which has “ambition and unique engineering capacities.”
Davide Brivio meanwhile joined Alpine as Racing Director in 2021 but has been promoted to a new directorial role – Director of Racing Expansion Projects, which will enable him to oversee all of Alpine’s participation in multiple categories as well as their Young Driver Academy.
Speaking about his promotion, Brivio commented: “Alpine’s band of racers is a key to its long-term performance, and I’m thrilled to be able to contribute to the exciting ambition to shape a new culture within racing that is responsible and inclusive.
“Formula 1 is a flagship, but we also need to develop our ambition in new territories, and I am ready to support Laurent Rossi towards this goal.”
Alpine CEO, Laurent Rossi added that Szafnauer and Famin’s arrivals will see Alpine “move to a new level” this season with Szafnauer bringing “his unique experience in motorsports” alongside an “uncompromising desire to win” races.
Rossi also noted that Famin has a strong track record in creating technologies which can make a difference in competitions and subsequent transfer to road cars, whilst also serving as “critical” for their project and as a brand too.
On Brivio’s move to Director of Racing Expansion Projects, Rossi explained that he had noticed his “talent to identify the best in people, and to make them perform as well as they can”, hence deploying him to the new role to extract maximum potential across entirety of Alpine.
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