Szafnauer: De Meo wants success instantly, that's not how it works

Szafnauer has been fired as Team Principal of Alpine with immediate effect over the weekend of the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix, the French marque declaring at the time that they couldn't agree a timeline with the former Alpine F1 team boss.

Speaking to SiriusXM, Szafnauer delved more into the details of his Alpine sacking, and went on the offensive accusing the top management at Renault, Alpine's parent company, and namely CEO Luca de Meo of not understanding how things work in F1.

He said: "I think the senior management at Renault, CEO Luca de Meo, as everyone does in F1, wants success instantly and unfortunately, that's not how it works in F1.

"They wanted to do it faster than is possible and I couldn't agree to an unrealistic timeline because if you do that, it's only a matter of time and everyone gets frustrated, so I laid out a very realistic and possible plan and I think they wanted to shortcut that plan with somebody else," he explained.

Szafnauer, who was temporarily replaced by Alpine's Vice President of Motorsport , Bruni Famin, said after leaving the team that the management were pushing for unrealistic time frames also revealing he has been hiring new staff that needed time to join due to contractual reasons.

Szafnauer started hiring after finding out that some departments within the team were lacking the qualified staff, he said: "There are pockets of the organisation that the skill level is at a very elementary level and that's because the people they have there were college graduates, for example, as opposed to somebody with 25 years of knowledge.

"It was in those areas that I started to recruit, but the best in Formula 1 are usually on long-term contracts, at least three years.

"I was able to convince quite a few people in areas that we needed to bolster, but unfortunately they were to come some in the autumn of '23, most of them mid '24 and some of them in 2025, and that's what I try to explain that: 'Look, it's happening, it's coming and sometimes you take a half step backwards to take two forward.

"And they just didn't have that understanding. Either it was impatience or it was emotion, but definitely no understanding and unfortunately that's what it takes and that's what they'll find," he lamented.

One of the issues Szafnauer, also struggled with was Renault's continuous involvement in the day to day running of the Alpine F1 Team, which meant bureaucracy slowed him down when he was trying to do his job.

"The parent company wanted to have a lot of control in a lot of areas of the racing team, more than I've ever seen before," he said.

"The commercial area, the marketing area, HR, finance, communication, all that stuff reported not to me but around me, to somebody else in the bigger organisation, and they all act like a Navy, and we have to be pirates in order to win.

"It's not okay at all because if you're going to hire somebody and you've got to get a contract out within a day because that's what we do in Formula 1, you can't take two weeks.

"If it takes you two weeks, maybe that special hire went somewhere else. You've got to be pirates," the former Aston Martin boss maintained.

Alpine are yet to announce Szafnauer's replacement, with several reports claiming it may be former Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto.