Further changes have been made at Alpine following a slow start to the F1 season and mixed results at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Earlier this week the team parted ways with director of operations Rob White, who joined the team in 2004 and helped Renault win titles in both 2005 and 2006. BBC Sports First reported Friday news.
“We are announcing Rob White’s departure as part of a wider operational restructuring of the team,” an Alpine spokesman said. BBC Sports.
“The team would like to thank Rob for his efforts during his long career at Enstone and Viry-Chatillon, where he led the championship-winning engine projects in 2005 and 2006, and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”
The move is the latest in a series of changes the team has made over the past year.
Last season saw team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alain Perlman sacked during the week of the Belgian Grand Prix, while this year began with the resignations of technical director Matt Herrmann and head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer. These moves came after a difficult start to the year, when Alpine’s 2024 challenger, the A524, was overweight, putting the team on the back foot from the start of the season.
At the start of March, the team announced an internal restructuring, replacing their single technical director position with three newly created technical positions. The team announced a “three-pillar approach” with Technical Director (Performance), Technical Director (Aerodynamics) and Technical Director (Engineering). Alpine appointed Joe Burnell as the team’s new Technical Director (Engineering), David Wheater as the team’s new Technical Director (Aerodynamics) and Ciaron Pilbeam as the new Technical Director (Performance).
And earlier this month, Alpine announced that David Sanchez would join the team as executive technical director and lead its design facility.
These moves improved the team’s performance, but perhaps not at the pace that fans expected. Esteban Ocon earned the team its first points of the season with a 10th place finish at the Miami Grand Prix, and after failing to score at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix Alpine, a better result seemed likely at the Monaco Grand Prix. Pierre Gasly made it into Q3 for the first time this season and started the race in 10th place, with Ocon just behind him in 11th.
However, a collision between the teammates on the opening lap caused heavy damage to Ocon’s A524, dropping him out of the race, but the team was able to repair the damage to Gasly’s A524 during a red flag resulting from a major collision on the same lap involving Sergio Pérez, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg, allowing Gasly to score his first points of the season in 10th place.
But Alpine is frustrated by Ocon’s bold move on the opening lap, which Gasly said violated team instructions: “There were clear instructions from the team on what to do and what not to do, and these were not respected.” [by Ocon]”Gasly said after finishing 10th.
Speaking to French media during the race Canal PlusTeam principal Bruno Famin suggested there would be “consequences” for Ocon’s bold move. Ocon has apologised both within the team and on social media, but Famin’s Canal Plus The incident sparked speculation that Ocon would be banned from the Canadian Grand Prix. Ocon had already been penalised five places on the grid for the next race due to the incident, and Monaco race officials deemed the collision “fully responsible” and gave him a 10-second penalty, but this was later changed to a five-place grid penalty as Ocon was unable to continue the race.
