David Sanchez joins Alpine after leaving McLaren

The French team's announcement comes exactly one month after Sanchez left McLaren following a technical shakeup at the Woking-based Formula 1 team after a short tenure that started back in January. He will join the team immediately.

Alpine are enduring a horrible season so far with an under-powered and over-weight car in the form of the A524, following a turbulent 2023 season when Otmar Szafnauer, Alan Permane were fired with Pat Fry jumping ship for Williams.

Sanchez has worked for in F1 with Renault before and will return to occupy a "newly created role" where he will "oversee the technical department based at Enstone and will have overall responsibility of the Performance, Engineering, and Aerodynamic areas of the team".

Alpine explained in their statement: "David will manage the three key areas that fall under the recently announced three-pillared technical structure, with Ciaron Pilbeam (Technical Director - Performance), Joe Burnell (Technical Director - Engineering), and David Wheater (Technical Director - Aerodynamics) all reporting to him."

Bruno Famin, Team Principal, BWT Alpine F1 Team and VP, Alpine Motorsports, said: "I am delighted to welcome David back to Enstone, where he started his career back in 2005. This is a key appointment to ensure we are optimising everything we do as a team and focusing on the right performance areas. It is clear that the performance of the car and development path has not moved at a sufficient pace relative to our ambitions as a team. We look forward to welcoming David and working hard together to achieve the ultimate success."

David Sanchez, Executive Technical Director, BWT Alpine F1 Team, said: "I'm excited by this challenge at Alpine. I'm looking forward to working at Enstone again, the place where I started my Formula 1 career. This team has always had so many fantastic people involved and there is clearly so much potential to unlock. We have a big task ahead to improve on-track performance and it is this type of challenge that motivates me. I'm very much ready to begin and look forward to working with the Enstone-Viry technical teams again with the sole aim of bringing regular success back to this great team."