“From Alpine’s point of view, the team would obviously like to be compensated for the millions of dollars spent preparing Piastri for Formula 1. Alpine has subsidized the expenses of his junior single-seater career as well as organized an extensive slate of tests in the team’s F1 cars used in previous seasons.”
And yet the driver says:
“I understand that, without my agreement, Alpine F1 have put out a press release late this afternoon that I am driving for them next year. This is wrong and I have not signed a contract with Alpine for 2023. I will not be driving for Alpine next year.”
Sooo. Assuming Alpine did in fact fund this guy on the way up, that’s a big deal money wise.
WTF happened to make the driver utterly reject the team that paid for his development?
With the amount of conjecture flying about on social media and news reports leads me to believe it’ll be a while before we know the full details of what has actually happened. It takes years for this stuff to become public and known.
People forget how much misinformation has been put out there already and forgotten. We’ve had so-called 1st Aug deadlines, we’ve have had so-called FIA contractual board decisions that now don’t make sense etc…
if you want to know the full truth… you’ll have to wait I’m afraid.
Yeah I think there is plenty going on organizationally at Alpine to make it a career dead-end in the eyes of some. Otherwise why would Alonso jump to an arguably worse team, and why would Piastri abandon all the time he spent integrating into the team. You also has Prost quit and deliver a scathing assessment of Rossi and his vision for the team. If you have two of the all-time greats jumping ship as well as your star of the future, there has to be some vacuum somewhere that they are all seeing.
Lots of people say that since Rossi came in as CEO, the management of the team has just been off the rails.
I guess. I don’t think Alonso is there to make up the numbers though. He works too hard and already has enough money. The contract length is probably the clincher for him.
Rossi has been cleaning house since he came in. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but certainly Alpine continues to be a bit of a sh*tshow since they came back into the sport as a factory effort.