Alpine F1 Team works with two team bosses this year
F1 News
- GPblog.com
In recent years Cyril Abiteboul was the boss of Renault F1 Team, but with the many changes the team has gone through he no longer plays a role. Abiteboul left the team and now at Alpine F1 Team they choose to divide the role of team boss over more people. Each one also gets a complementary role in a different area and in this way the team is trying to present itself as a completely new player.
Two men at the helm
The CEO of the Alpine street car division, Laurent Rossi, has indicated to Autosport.com that there is no direct replacement for Abiteboul. Instead, his responsibilities will be divided between Marcin Budkowski and Davide Brivio. According to Rossi, the responsibilities for the men are clear and therefore no further adjustment in the structure is necessary.
Rossi: "Marcin will be in charge of the development of the chassis and the powertrain, so he'll coordinate the whole development of the car. Davide will be racing director. So the two of them will work in tandem to extract the best out of the car, that has been designed to put us into the best position in the future.
"The rest of the team are keeping their existing line structures: to Marcin in Enstone or to myself in Viry. It is a bit of a different situation because it's a new manufacturer if you will, but besides those two lines that I said, the rest stays like it was last year," said Rossi.
Unusual, but workable
Budkowski says it is somewhat unusual for teams to work without a specific boss, but he believes the situation is workable. For example, he says, "We went for a slightly different structure than the conventional team structure. At the end of the day, the roles and the responsibilities are clear - it's just we are calling them a little bit differently.
"We're a French team at the end, and we had to put a bit of a French touch in the organisational structure as well!"
But there is another reason behind this structure. They are also currently working hard on the significantly different car for 2022, and that makes it difficult for individuals like Budkowski to be both in Enstone at the factory as well as go to all the races.
"For me, it’s personally great to have Davide on board, apart from all the skills he brings from his other motorsport experiences. It means I won’t have to go to all the races. It means I will probably do the majority of them, but probably start skipping a few in the second half of the season," Budkowski said.