Former Alpine bosses Cyril Abiteboul and Marcin Budkowski have launched further attacks on the team after their dismissals of senior figures Laurent Rossi, Otmar Szafnauer and Pat Fry in successive weeks.
Alain Prost had previously lambasted the team as ‘arrogant and incompetent’, after they sacked their CEO Rossi and team principal Szafnauer around the Hungarian and Belgian Grand Prix.
And after the recent news that Fry‘s also left Enstone to continue as a chief technical officer at Williams, the pressure isn’t easing on the beleaguered team.
“This reflects dissatisfaction with the results and most likely a loss of patience on the part of the Renault Group’s management committee,” Abiteboul told France Info.
“Beyond impatience, there may also have been a bit of arrogance at the start of the season or overconfidence.
“When you don’t face up to reality, after a while you start telling yourself stories. You cannot rule out that the story they told themselves internally was too flattering, but Alpine isn’t that far off either.”
Abiteboul hasn’t been involved in F1 since he was dismissed as team principal at Enstone ahead of the team’s rebrand from Renault to Alpine.
Meanwhile Budkowski left Alpine ahead of the 2022 season and is also yet to return to F1 in an engineering capacity.
Budkowski doubles down on Alpine criticism
Former Alpine executive director Budkowski also had his say on the current state of the team, and criticised their funding and commitment from Renault.
He defended Szafnauer saying the former boss had what it takes to succeed in F1 but was hamstrung by relative lack of resources, and pointed to Aston Martin and McLaren‘s jumps up the grid.
“Generally, Alain and I see things in a similar way,” Budkowski told Viaplay Sport Polska. “I’m sad as well, because this team is still close to my heart. I know a lot of people there and have contact with them. And they deserve better – better results and better management.”
“The problem with Renault in F1 has always been that the ambitions are very high, but the financial resources are insufficient.”
“Every year the ambitions got higher and higher, but the resources that are put into it do not. But the Renault board never wanted to hear that.”
Where is the next F1 2023 race?
F1 will return from its summer break with the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix from Zandvoort on August 25-27, where championship leader Max Verstappen will be racing on home soil.
