Alpine team boss Oakes refuses to write off 2025 F1 season already

In July 2024, Oliver Oakes took over as Alpine's team boss. Having impressed as team owner of Hitech, it was a matter of time before Oli Oakes joined Formula 1. At first, Oakes seemed to be on his way to F1 with Hitech itself, but that was ultimately not approved.

Now Oakes is at the helm of a Formula 1 team. As team boss, Oakes works with Luca de Meo, Alpine's CEO, and his adviser Flavio Briatore. In the first months of their time at the helm, Alpine was immediately successful at the Brazilian Grand Prix and still finished sixth among constructors.

What Oliver Oakes did first at Alpine

''I always feel wrong and a bit uncomfortable talking about that,'' Oakes states in an exclusive interview with GPblog when asked about the first thing he did in his new role.

''I think at the end of the day, nothing I've done is one individual. The seeds were already planted in this sort of recovery turnaround way before I joined the team. I think probably I've been here more as someone giving a bit of confidence in the team. And I think that's the main thing. I think really you have to ask everybody else what they think. There's 900 odd people you can ask.''

Oakes' modesty immediately resurfaces. The Briton makes it clear in everything that it is not about him, but about the team. The people in the team have to make the difference, Oakes focuses mainly on finding the right people and then giving those people the confidence to do a good job.

Oakes' vision at Alpine

Oakes therefore does not force 'his vision' on the team. Indeed. Asked about his vision, a very down-to-earth answer follows: ''My vision? I think really it's already there. I want a clear focus on we're here to go racing. We're not going to accept walking to the back of the grid, we want to be there in the midfield, we eventually want to be there at the front of the grid, but that doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen in 6 months, 12 months, that takes a bit of time.''

''I think also you need to stack everything step by step and, obviously, the first step was to come in and support the team, give it some stability, give it some leadership. The second step is to put it in the direction we want to go. That isn't always anything tangible, some of that is really a bit of values, bit of culture, and a bit of a discussion over what do we need to do to get better. I think there's obviously some strategic choices there whether that's your driver lineup, whether that's your power unit decision.''

''We go into ‘25, which is probably one of the busiest years or busiest winters you're going to have in F1. You'd love to make loads of improvements, but you're a bit limited with budget cap and focusing on 2026. You've got to decide as the team boss, do you want to, dare say, write off ‘25 and focus only for ‘26 and ‘27?''

''I don't believe anyone's going to do that in F1 because everyone wants to go racing, everyone's pushing. When I read some of that recently, I thought, well, that's because some teams know they're kind of already not finding the performance they want for 2025. I think from our side, we've got to balance those resources, but we're not going to write off a whole season.''

The culture of Alpine F1

Oakes dropped the word himself: culture. Almost every team in F1 nowaydays speaks of a certain culture. Whether it's the loud music at Red Bull Racing or Mercedes' 'no blame culture', the trend is for teams to have their own culture. What is Alpine's culture under Oakes' leadership?

''I think I was pretty direct when I joined, and with Flavio, together. We're here to go racing. That's the first thing. For me everything else is secondary and I think when you focus to that and you focus on getting the basics right, then you can start to be inventive about all those other things.''

''I think people have started to see that the past sort of weeks or months since I've been here, that we don't want to be here talking loads. We just want to focus on ourselves. Unfortunately, we've made a few own goals with certain things we had to announce that created a bit of noise.''

''But at the end of the day that's part of F1 today. I think if you look at the very best teams in F1, where they've got the balance right is their priorities, and that is about producing a quick car and then executing that well on track. I think for me, it might sound really simple, but that is my number one focus at the moment.''

Want to read more about Oliver Oakes? GPblog also spoke to Oliver Oakes about his bond with Flavio Briatore and who really is the boss at Alpine. You can read that story here.

More Oliver Oakes on GPblog.com soon. So Oakes talked about his road to Formula 1 and what he found in his first months at Alpine. You can read that and more soon on GPblog.com!