Alpine's Rossi and Szafnauer like 'two Popes of separate churches'

Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer says there is an overlap of responsibilities between himself and Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi at the French outfit, but he insists the two executives are like "Popes of separate churches".

Alpine's previously complicated management structure – helmed by a triumvirate comprised of Rossi, executive director Marcin Budkowski and racing director Davide Brivio – made way at the start of 2022 for a more traditional format in which Szafnauer, as the Enstone squad's team principal, reported only to Rossi.

Upon his arrival at Alpine, Szafnauer justified his exit from Aston Martin by saying that a team cannot operate with "two Popes", suggesting that responsibilities had not clearly been clearly spelled out between himself and fellow Aston executive Martin Whitmarsh.

While Szafnauer admits there's some overlap at Alpine between himself and Rossi, he insists that responsibilities and hierarchy are clearly defined.

"Working with Laurent is really easy," said the American, quoted by Motorsport.com.

"Because we're like Popes of separate churches. He's CEO of Alpine, the car company, and I report to him.

"One of the pillars of the Alpine car company is a F1 team, or one of the entities underneath him. So I just report to him there.

"He's got all sorts of other direct reports, to sell cars, design cars, manufacture cars, market the cars, all that stuff. It's kind of like Toto [Wolff] reporting to Ola Kallenius.

• Read also: Alpine keen to exploit Gasly's 'technical leadership'

"The last thing you want when you first come in is to have underlap," Szafnauet added.

"Overlap means I do this and you do this, so we overlap on this stuff. Underlap is I don't do it, and you don't do it. And it just falls through the cracks.

"So that's worse. At the beginning, there was some overlap. And then [it becomes] I'll do this, you do this, then you get it so there's no underlap, there's no overlap, I do this stuff, you do this stuff. And we're at that spot now."

Case in point: Alpine's hiring of Pierre Gasly from AlphaTauri, a move initiated by Szafnauer who completed the groundwork for Rossi to step in and conclude the deal.

"I called Franz [Tost] to say can you release him? And Franz said no. And so I said, 'well, great. I'm glad you said that'.

"Because the last thing I wanted to hear was, yeah, I can't wait to get rid of this guy! He said, no, I need him, he's a great driver. I don't want to lose him.

"I said 'thank you, with all due respect, do you mind if I call Helmut [Marko]? He might have a different perspective'.

"I called Helmut. But at the same time, when I got to certain milestones, I would call Laurent and say, look, this is what I've done. This is how far I've gotten. I now have to go to America and talk to Bryan Herta about a release [for Colton Herta].

"And I did that bit of it too. I went and had lunch with Bryan and Colton. Because the release was conditional upon Red Bull finding a replacement that they were happy with.

"Otherwise they wouldn't have released him."

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter