Choppy start to Alpine's F1 season that's behind Laurent Rossi's outburst

And right now, Alonso must find it hard not to laugh to himself when he looks at what is happening at Enstone.

There’s absolutely no doubt about it, Szafnauer is living on borrowed time. It doesn’t feel like he has been in the role long — a little over a year — and, as mentioned, the contract debacle surrounding Piastri was already starting to play out before he had even begun work, but he was criticised by McLaren boss Zak Brown for the way he called the Australian’s integrity into question.

It was perhaps his less-than-ideal relationship with Alonso that was the first dent in his armour, with Alonso not even informing Szafnauer he was leaving, but instead telling many other team members.

And while Szafnauer did get to oversee the strong overall result last season from a difficult starting point – also accelerating the team’s development program through the year – this year has not begun smoothly.

So when the feedback from Szafnauer – admittedly provided by his technical team – to his CEO Laurent Rossi was that Alpine could make a further step towards third place this season, it needed to be backed up. And so far from a results point of view at least, it hasn’t been.

After five races last year, Alpine was 69 points off the third-placed team. This year, it is 86.

Rossi is furious, and let a few select media outlets know about it in Miami. Long-established plans meant both Rossi and Renault’s Luca de Meo were always due to be on-site in Florida due to the team’s Autonation sponsorship deal, but Rossi ended up increasing the pressure on Alpine after a start to the season that even now, after double points in Sunday’s race, leaves the team sixth in the constructors’ championship.

It’s the number of mistakes that have really got to Rossi, and that’s why he has now got Szafnauer firmly in his crosshairs. If it was only the fact that Alpine appears to not be as close to its goal as targeted – while Aston Martin has sensationally leapt up to the second-fastest team – then perhaps it would be the technical team receiving the majority of the heat. But it’s other issues, too.

Engineering-wise the team had a poor weekend in Baku, hitting trouble in FP1 and failing to get a freshly-upgraded car performing to anywhere near the level it had expected. That was compounded by Pierre Gasly’s qualifying crash – one of multiple driver errors this year – and the end result was nil points.

Prior to that was the costly ending to what had looked a much more promising Australian Grand Prix, where Gasly’s hopes of a top five disappeared when he went wide at Turn 1 on the final restart, and wiped out team-mate Esteban Ocon on his resumption. These were two drivers where there had been intense focus on the past relationship – or lack of it in recent years – right from the moment they were signed. Race three and such a collision was painful.

And of course, perhaps the most embarrassing episode of them all was at the season-opener in Bahrain, where Ocon amassed multiple penalties, the majority driver-related but including one for the team touching the car too soon when trying to take a previously-earned punishment.

This year’s Alpine shows some very promising underlying pace at times, but watching Alonso and to a lesser extent Piastri both enjoy better execution this year – even if it’s a poor car that McLaren has delivered up to this point and Alpine’s drivers have to take a huge slice of the blame – certainly doesn’t appear to have gone unnoticed by Rossi.

“It starts with owning up to your mistakes, to not repeat the mistakes, to learn from your mistakes,” he told the Formula 1 website. “It’s OK to make mistakes, it’s not OK to make them twice because it means you didn’t learn. This year, there is a lot of excuses, which lead to poor performance and a lack of operational excellence.

“I need to tackle this, I need the right people to tackle this. I need the team to be aware they need to do that as it’s not up to me – it’s up to them, they have to do it. It’s their responsibility. I hope they make the same diagnosis. I will make it clear to them that this is the diagnosis and they need to fix that.”

A CEO stepping into the limelight to criticise their team is a significant step, and it comes against the backdrop of whispers that Rossi had actually intended to remove Szafnauer by now. Whether that is true or this weekend’s outbursts were designed to be the final warning shot across the bows, certain comments feel like taking the leadership team’s dynamic beyond the point of no return.

“Trust is something that increases with good results and erodes with bad results,” he adds, after reiterating the buck stops with Szafnauer. “Everyone starts with a capital of trust and then you manage it.

“There are only so many setbacks you can take in a sport, in a competition world, because basically it shows. Everyone can tell whether or not you’re going in the right direction. It directly impacts your capital of trust. I would say Otmar is very capable, but he has a big task on his hands.”

Too right he does. At most sports teams, a manager is left fearing for their job when their boss starts handing out the dreaded vote of confidence, but despite Rossi’s comments appearing extremely premature, have you ever heard of them turning around a situation such as this?