Famin to remain Alpine team principal unless told to replace himself

Current Alpine interim team principal Bruno Famin says he will remain in the role unless told otherwise by his Renault bosses, and is not actively looking to hire a replacement.

Famin took on the position on an interim basis at the Belgian Grand Prix this year, when previous team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane left their roles. At the time Famin said the search for a new team principal started on the Sunday night after the race in Spa, but now the Frenchman states he is likely to stay in the role himself.

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“It’s not my P1 task, to be honest,” Famin said. “The P1 task was making the people working together.

“I am not a big fan of changing the organization for changing the organization. Because if you can change an organization in the way you want, as many times in the way you want, if the people don’t want to work together, it will never work.

“Then the point is more to find how to get the people working well together, to extract the best performance out of everyone, of the global team. That’s really the point. As far as I’m concerned about being team principal, I’m quite happy with the position. As far as my boss is not telling me to change, I will remain.”

Famin said that communicating with as many areas of the team as possible was one of the keys to helping personnel feel more settled after the summer upheaval.

“I have not done anything weird or particular," he said. "What I have done is talk to people, going to the factory, going everywhere in the factory. I haven’t got the opportunity to talk to everybody, of course. In the time I spent in Enstone, I spent a lot of time talking to people, not only to my first report, but in the workshops, in the design office, in aero, in IT, everywhere, to confirm the project, to confirm the ambition of the project, and to share my view of how we are moving things.

“That’s for me, and then I think it was at the end of October, Luca de Meo came to Enstone, but he was talking to all the Alpine racing staff, both sides. He was reaffirming the project, the ambition, and also what we expect in terms of attitude from the guys, saying that need the people – all the people – to be at 100% of their capacities to be able to be competitive in such a hard fight with the competitors.”