New F1 team boss Oakes shares anecdote: 'Wolff welcomed me into the club'

Oakes joined Alpine from F2 and F3, where he was a director and founder of Hitech GP. During the Singapore GP, the Briton underlined that the world F1 is not too different from the two feeder series. "It’s funny. Some of it is really similar. You have the same characters in different roles. Different people," the team principal began.

Oakes: 'Toto welcomed me into the club'

"No matter what you race, some of it is the same it’s just another person. Some of it is very different. Toto made me laugh when he rang me and said welcome to Stefano’s club. There’a a bit of that which is fun. All those challenges are quite interesting. It’s not just making a race car go faster. You need to get hold of good people," he continued.

A big difference to the feeder series in that in Formula One, a team have to develope their own cars and also have to come up with different ideas to have an advantage over their rivals. 

"Recently, the McLaren topic [about flexiwings]. They did a good job with everyone lobbying against them. At the moment, I’m not caught up in that. We just need to make a better car but there’s nothing like F1 is there?," Oakes explained.

"In the junior stuff, it’s interesting. You have the benefit that everyone has the same car so it’s a simplistic approach. You know one week to the next whether you did a good job or a bad job. But a lot of it is the same. It is about the people. It is about having trust from them. It is about being reactive. You know what the problem is."

"Working with the drivers is a big part. I’m lucky with Esteban and Pierre. They are both professional. There’s a lot in the press about them but they’ve been good this year. What the teams been through, they’re pushing really hard which is making my job easier," Oakes concluded. Alpine currently stand in P9 of the constructors' championship, three points behind Williams.

This article was written in collaboration with Nicole Mulder

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