Szafnauer lashes out: 'They have no knowledge of the sport'
F1 News
Former team principal Otmar Szafnauer is critical of how F1 team are run nowadays. According to him, many treat their teams as football clubs given how quickly they expect progress immediately and are willing to make changes soon, while success cannot be achieved that way.
According to Szafnauer, the way Formula 1 teams are run has changed enormously these days. "In the days of Eddie Jordan and Frank Williams and Ron Dennis and Adrian Reynard at British American Racing you had owners that deeply understood motor racing," he began in the Formula for Success podcast. He also added that previously, owners came from a background in racing, being drivers or engineers and mechanics themselves.
Actual progress in Formula 1 is different, he explains. "It takes sustained and long and good work to end up winning, because everyone else is competent too. But the new ownership isn’t like that. They have very little understanding of motor racing."
While in other competitions, changes could influence a team's path quicker, Szafnauer believes these people fail to understand this sport cannot be compared to football as an example. "They look at Formula 1 as a sport, they look at football teams that can change five players from one year to the next and go from mid-table to winning and they think the same can happen in Motorsport. Especially in Formula 1, that can’t happen"
Departure from Alpine
Szafnauer joined Alpine ahead of the 2022 season, but left after only spending a year and a half with the French squad. Citing Red Bull Racing and Adrian Newey for example, he reasoned that it also took them many season to finally win a title in 2010, with Sebastian Vettel in their car. "I quickly realized that at Renault or at Alpine, the ownership had no idea about motor racing and their expectations were not in line with reality. They wanted success overnight, they wanted me to fire everybody like on a football team."
The former team principal could not complete what was asked from him. "They wanted me to change 20% of the employees and when I said: 'no, that’s not the way to do it, I can’t fire people that are doing a good job, to change a culture, it’s not it’s not how you go about things' - I knew it was time. I knew they had different thoughts on how to run a Formula One team and I just couldn’t stay," he concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Kimberly Hoefnagel
Want more Formula 1? Then follow GPblog on our various social media channels!