Oakes: Great having Briatore to bounce ideas off

Alpine has undergone various changes in the previous months, with Briatore hired by Renault CEO Luca de Meo to help him turn the struggling F1 outfit's fortunes around.

Bruno Famin was replaced by Oakes in the role of team principa,l and the Renault F1 power unit operations have been terminated as Alpine will become a customer team, most probably of Mercedes.

Speaking to F1's official website, Oakes was asked about working with Briatore, the latter formerly occupying the role of team boss for the Enstone-based Alpine.

"It’s great working with him, having him to bounce ideas off," Oakes said. "F1 has changed, but the basics are the same. I think he is very good at reminding me of that. Being somewhere new, you could go too much the other way so that’s helpful.

"He’s very emotionally invested in Enstone. It’s his baby as a team, and he genuinely wants to see the place get a bit of its mojo back. It’s great to have around. It’s infectious because he does love it," the Briton added.

Oakes started his motorsport career as a racing driver and then set up his own racing team, Hitech, that now competes in Formula 2, Formula 3, and other categories.

Asked how being an F1 boss differs from managing teams in the junior categories, the new Alpine boss responded: "A lot of it is about people and bringing performance.

"I smile because it doesn’t matter what it is – they are the two fundamental things. Obviously there is a lot more to it in F1. I never want to be condescending. F1 is far more complex, particularly the lead times on things improving and making change.

"Some things are the same as in the junior stuff," he went on. "You have a weekend where you struggle with something like getting the front tyres in and the next weekend you’ve done a load of work at the factory trying to improve on that.

"Then you have things which are very different and much bigger, whether that’s a component on the car we know for next year we’d like to improve but it takes a long time to come together, and that is different. I’d say it’s as expected," he explained.

As to the plans he has to make Alpine successful again, Oakes said: "It’s a hard one. What’s different today, in the role that I’m in leading an F1 team, is there are 1,000 people.

"You don’t necessarily make all of them happy all of the time – and that’s interesting, that’s dawning on me quite a bit – but I think the main thing early doors here at Enstone is that the team now has stability. It has two guys who are leading it who are very aligned in where we want to go. I can already see some good things from that.

"People are happy we are there, we’re in the factory, we’re genuinely trying to set out a bit of a journey back over the next couple of years. Everything is results based. [If] we bring some performance over [the next] races, and deliver results, it naturally leads to people [inside the organisation] feeling a bit better.

"It all goes hand-in-hand. There’s a lot of affection for what Enstone is, but the crux is people come to work because they want to be in an organisation that is performing," Oakes concluded.

Oakes has become the second youngest person to become an F1 team principal, the youngest being Red Bull Racing's Christian Horner.