Alpine and Audi unattractive for drivers
There are two teams in Formula 1 that are struggling to define their drivers for next season and they are Alpine and Sauber-Audi. The atmosphere in the French team has been very tense for at least a couple of years due to the lack of results given the investments made and Esteban Oconprobably fed up with the situation, has already announced that he will leave Alpine at the end of the season.
Esteban’s probable destination will be the Haas, therefore a transition from an official team to a customer team, which says a lot about the declining prices of the French team. It is not yet clear whether at least Gasley he will remain in Alpine and in any case Pierre is also looking around. Things aren’t much better at Sauber, which will officially become Audi from 2026.
Despite the coat of arms of the German brand, which has triumphed in every motorsport category in which it has ventured, at the moment only Nico Hulkenberg has been signed for the next two years, and Audi’s close court towards Sainz does not seem to be able to convince the Spanish driver who many say has now settled in Williams. Here too it would be the refusal of a driver towards the offer of an official manufacturer to opt in favor of a customer team.
Alpine in management chaos
Speaking on the podcast “Missed Apex” Joe Saward, a well-known “sharp” English motorsport sign with years of experience and deep knowledge in the paddock, gave his point of view on the political situation behind the scenes at Alpine and Audi. Regarding the situation of the French team, which he himself predicts will switch to a customer engine in 2026 to avoid having to face the development costs of the new power units, these were his words:
“In Enstone, they wiped out almost all the good people, a whole generation of people who know from the old days how to win. They recently got rid of Rob White, which made Enstone and Viry work together and win two championships in 2005 and 2006. Dumping someone with so much expertise and making all the other changes makes no sense to me. They destroyed a team and replaced some people but there is no evidence that these new people will eventually become capable. I don’t think he’s very smart. Manufacturers who come to F1 think they know all the answers, and when they realize they don’t know the answers they hire someone who does and these people tell them it will take a long time and the builders don’t believe them. Exactly what he did Otmar Szafnauer (former Alpine team principal ed.). He told them, that they should do this, that and the other and the team even did well (winning a GP with Ocon ed) but they kicked him out because he was taking too long. I understand that if you are the head of a big car company you have other things to worry about like Chinese manufacturers about to enter the car market and kill you or the French government that wants to merge you with Peugeot. But you have to spend a little more time thinking about Formula 1 not just deciding in a split second what you think is best to do.”
Even Audi poisoned by political currents
Even more interesting is the background that Saward revealed on the political situation of the Audi Formula 1 program. Here too the situation seems rather explosive with some similarities to the situation in Alpine:
“Audi is in difficulty for various reasons. One is that he took over Sauber, which has been in great difficulty for the last two years, and another is because brand new executives are coming in and they expect to do everything and who are at the highest levels of Volkswagen corporate policy. The person in charge (Oliver Hoffman ed.) was practically kicked out of the Audi board of directors and thrown into the Formula 1 program. One gets the impression that this was simply the best way to get rid of him, but that doesn’t mean it will be there forever and ever he is a company man he is not a racing man, so he involves people he knows from the corporate world and this does not help the members of the racing team who know what they are doing. These managers, as happened at Alpine Renault, come in thinking they know all the answers and mess everything up. So we have to see who wins and if in the end we see that Andrea Seidl is expelled from the top of that program we will know that the corporate consortium has won esand this happenedThe team is doomed. My feeling is that Audi will come and will essentially be more or less the same infrastructure as Sauber. I think they will have more money, and all the new things they need and all the things money can buy, but a lot of the old members of the Audi Motor Sport department have gone elsewhere or retired, so there are a lot of question marks. And if you’re a driver and you have a limited career ahead of you, you’re going to look at those question marks and think you can’t stay there for six years before they win something.”
