Two contracts signed with two teams. It will be up to the CRB (Contract Recognition Board) to settle the legal question, given that the matter will almost inevitably end up in court, but there is a clear point: Oscar Piastri will not drive in 2023 for Alpine.
The young Australian driver has definitively broken all links with the French team, ending up in the “conspiracy” hatched by Fernando Alonso, Flavio Briatore, Lance Stroll and Mark Webber. The two-time Formula 1 world champion has involved in a little game that has put Otmar Szafnauer, Alpine team principal, in a bad light, as the Romanian-American engineer was capable of denying even the most obvious things with hard determination in front of the media, such as his passage from Aston Martin to the Enstone team.
Fernando Alonso in Hungary had hinted to Otmar Szafnaur that he would renew his contract with Alpine, but he still needed some time before closing the deal. Fernando, on the other hand, waited for Piastri’s option to drive with Alpine to expire, freeing Oscar from any constraints of driving for the French team and then formalized his passage to Aston Martin on 1 August with a two-year agreement, given that Alpine was not willing to give him a contract for two seasons, putting on the table a deal of only one season, with on option in favor of the team to extend it for a second year.
Mark Webber, Oscar Piastri’s manager, also worked behind the scenes: he signed a contract with McLaren to accommodate his driver in the cockpit intended for Daniel Ricciardo. The Australian took advantage of the opportunity to get out of the obligations with Alpine constraints and bring Piastri into the field of the “enemy”: the French brand is fighting with the Woking team for fourth place in the Constructors’ World Championship and for now is ahead of the team led by Andreas Seidl.
Alpine was unable to guarantee a place for Oscar Piastri if Fernando Alonso renewed his contract, but the Enstone team was ready to loan their talented young driver to Williams so as not to lose him. Oscar, however, preferred McLaren to the Grove team, but his behavior left many people in the paddock perplexed.
The mockery on social media against Alpine was not at all appreciated. The French team found itself in a very bad situation, as team principal Otmar Szafnauer looked like a colossal fool. He had two strong drivers in his hand and lost both of them in an instant. The irritation of the president and CEO of Renault, Luca De Meo, is more than justified, because the French team did not deserve such treatment.
However, there is a but. And it’s as big as a house. Is it right that an engine manufacturer, through his Academy, believed and invested in the talent of a young driver, raising him from Formula Renault, passing through Formula 3 and Formula 2 categories that Oscar has promptly won, indeed dominated?
By not being able to guarantee a starting place for Oscar Piastri this year, Alpine has set up a test program with an F1 car from two years ago, to keep their “gem” in training: those who quantified the investment wrote about more than seven millions euros spent. In short, money literally thrown away, given the outcome of the story.
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Net of the management errors that someone has committed and who will be held accountable to those in charge, a disturbing fact emerges: does it make sense for a brand to invest huge capital to form a champion, if it is then taken away by its direct competitor?
Raising a young driver is a heavy commitment because it requires making “bets” on talents who are little more than children: Mercedes seems to have made the right decision by focusing on Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the Italian who in Formula 4 is confirming all the good things already shown in karting. For Toto Wolff, the Italian boy will be one of Lewis Hamilton’s heirs, but the Oscar Piastri case shows us that, perhaps, it is better to go and just get the driver you are interested in, without investing in the Academy. In this case it would be enough to have good scouts …
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